Their leaders, who were once close personal friends, are no longer on speaking terms. Tens of thousands of people have been deported or displaced and radio stations blare out vitriolic propaganda against one another.
These are complex events that have been further obscured by the contradictory versions of the truth that both sides have advanced. Until the end of the nineteenth century Ethiopia was rarely more than a loose confederation of kingdoms. The boundaries of the empire were fluid. When Tigrayan princes were in the ascendancy they exten- ded their influence towards the Red Sea coast of Eritrea, exacting tribute from the Muslim lowland chiefs.
From the sixteenth century the coastal plain passed through Ottoman and Egyptian hands before coming under Italian rule in the s. Italy promptly attempted to use it as a base from which to extend its influence into Ethiopia. These hopes were dashed when the Italians were defeated in by Ethiopian forces of Emperor Menelik in the battle of Adua. The Italians accepted their reverse, and signed treaties with the emperor in , and establishing the border between their new colony of Eritrea and Ethiopia.
With the rise of fascism under Mussolini, Italy was determined to extend its presence in the Horn. Its invasion of Ethiopia in October was condemned by the League of Nations, but it was only with the outbreak of the Second World War that the world took a decisive stand against Italian aggression.
By Emperor Haile Selassie had been returned to his throne by a combined force of British, South African, Indian and Sudanese troops fighting alongside Ethiopian patriots. While Ethiopia was independent once more, the international community was left with the problem of what to do with Eritrea. It was not until that it was finally decided by the United Nations that the territory should be federated with Ethiopia.
There matters might have rested but for the absolutist rule of the emperor, who managed to alienate the population by a series of decrees outlawing the teaching of Eritrean languages, by dismantling industries and removing them to Addis Ababa and by repressing the trade unions and political parties. By the early s this repression was being met by armed resistance. In November , after intense pressure from Addis Ababa, the federation was ended, and Eritrea was absorbed into Ethiopia.
This served to spur on the opposition, led at first by the Eritrean Liberation Front ELF , whose origins can partly be traced back to the Muslim League of the s and which drew most of its support from the Muslim community.
Disputes within the ELF, and particularly the hostility towards Christian recruits, resulted in the formation of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in the early s. The EPLF rejected ethnic differences and stood for a secular and socialist state. A bitter civil war followed.
Despite these divisions, and despite receiving military and economic support from the United States, Ethiopia's campaign against Eritrean self-determination did not go well. Discontent inside the Ethiopian army over the conduct of the war and the handling of a devastating famine led to the overthrow of the emperor in Haile Selassie was replaced by a committee - the Dergue - which came to be led by the equally autocratic Mengistu Haile Mariam.
After initial discussions with the Eritreans failed, the war continued and intensified. Now Addis Ababa turned to the Soviet Union for support, with Moscow providing vast quantities of military equipment to the new regime. Students from Tigray, angered by the lack of development of their province, and building on the ancient claims of Tigray to be the centre of the Ethiopian state, launched their own campaign against the Amhara, the traditional ruling elite in the imperial state.
In reality, however, the forms of national identity that the two movements pursued were very different. These differences were fundamental, and underly much of the current conflict. Eritrean nationalism was originally more complex and more difficult to forge precisely because it reflected a more diverse population.
Eritrea's 3. The EPLF had to fight a vigorous campaign within its own community to win their support. While the movement recognized and even celebrated the ethnic diversity of Eritrea, it resolutely refused to allow ethnicity to undermine its campaign for an independent state.
This is not to suggest that ethnicity did not play any part in the front's activities. Great care was taken to represent the whole population within the leadership, even when they were not as well represented among its membership, but some groups, including the Kumana and the Afar, retain aspirations of their own.
For the TPLF mobilization in Tigray was relatively simple, since it could call upon an existing concept of Tigrayan nationalism, a common history of oppression and a common religion in Christianity. In Tigrayan eyes the Amhara had usurped the traditional power base of Ethiopian society, and transferred it from the ancient Tigrayan capital of Axum to Addis Ababa.
In its first political programme the organization specified that it was fighting for the independence of Tigray from Ethiopia. Since the TPLF's war aims, at least in the beginning, centred on achieving power in Tigray itself, its successes against the forces of the Dergue posed something of a problem, and led to considerable internal debate. Would the movement be satisfied with capturing Tigray, or would a hostile government in Addis Ababa require it to fight for the control of all Ethiopia?
Achievement of the TPLF's initial objective, and almost total control over Tigray, raised the issue of whether to press on to Addis Ababa, or declare an independent Tigrayan state. Its leadership had ambitions to rule the whole of Ethiopia, creating the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front in , to provide a mechanism for other, ethnically based, parties to join the TPLF. Not all its own members agreed; many spontaneously went home. Tigrayan nationalism was, at least for the time being, to be subordinated to a wider Ethiopian identity.
The Eritrean struggle, which began in , eventually generated a powerful sense of collective identity. It was a nationalism forged in blood and with a clear objective in mind, namely an independent Eritrea, and shaped by its own experience of colonialism. Italian rule had fashioned Eritrea, just as other European colonizers had brought into being Africa's other states, with the exception of Ethiopia.
Italian colonialism had also brought with it some of the benefits of European rule, in the shape of modern port facilities, roads and railways. When the Italians were driven out in , they left behind a far more developed state than the feudal empire that existed in Ethiopia.
Little wonder that the Eritreans tended to look down on their cousins across the Mereb river as caught in the grip of a medieval power, despite their long shared heritage of imperial rule before the Italian conquest. The Tigrayans, on the other hand, also had much to be proud of: a historic past, the rule of the last Tigrayan emperor, Yohannis IV, , and local rebellions against Haile Selassie in the early s. But while Eritrean nationalism was clearly associated with a potential nation-state, Tigrayan nationalism had to play a difficult balancing act - at once emphasizing the aspirations of the Tigrayan people and coming to terms with the wider Ethiopian state.
While opposition to the dictatorial rule exercised from Addis Ababa united the two liberation movements, they were divided by a number of factors, including ideology, tactics and alliances. Amharic The World Factbook, the indispensable source for basic information. Tigrinya official , Arabic official , English official , Tigre, Kunama, Afar, other Cushitic languages Literacy definition: age 15 and over can read and write total population: Sanitation facility access improved: urban: Major cities - population 5.
Children under the age of 5 years underweight Infant, child, and maternal mortality have fallen sharply over the past decade, but the total fertility rate has declined more slowly and the population continues to grow. The rising age of marriage and the increasing proportion of women remaining single have contributed to fertility reduction.
While the use of modern contraceptive methods among married women has increased significantly from 6 percent in to 27 percent in , the overall rate is still quite low.
With more than 40 percent of the population below the age of 15 and a fertility rate of over 5 children per woman and even higher in rural areas , Ethiopia will have to make further progress in meeting its family planning needs if it is to achieve the age structure necessary for reaping a demographic dividend in the coming decades.
Before the revolution, only small numbers of the Ethiopian elite went abroad to study and then returned home, but under the brutal Derg regime thousands fled the country, primarily as refugees. Between and there was a new wave of migration to the West for family reunification. Internal and international trafficking of women and children for domestic work and prostitution is a growing problem.
Eritrea is a persistently poor country that has made progress in some socioeconomic categories but not in others. Education and human capital formation are national priorities for facilitating economic development and eradicating poverty. To this end, Eritrea has made great strides in improving adult literacy — doubling the literacy rate over the last 20 years — in large part because of its successful adult education programs.
Eritrea has been a leading refugee source country since at least the s, when its year war for independence from Ethiopia began. Since gaining independence in , Eritreans have continued migrating to Sudan, Ethiopia, Yemen, Egypt, or Israel because of a lack of basic human rights or political freedom, educational and job opportunities, or to seek asylum because of militarization.
In the last few years, Eritreans have increasingly been trafficked and held hostage by Bedouins in the Sinai Desert, where they are victims of organ harvesting, rape, extortion, and torture. Former President Dr. Ethiopia - the second most populous country in Africa - is a one-party state with a planned economy. This growth was driven by government investment in infrastructure, as well as sustained progress in the agricultural and service sectors. Ethiopia has the lowest level of income-inequality in Africa and one of the lowest in the world, with a Gini coefficient comparable to that of the Scandinavian countries.
Yet despite progress toward eliminating extreme poverty, Ethiopia remains one of the poorest countries in the world, due both to rapid population growth and a low starting base. Changes in rainfall associated with world-wide weather patterns resulted in the worst drought in 30 years in , creating food insecurity for millions of Ethiopians.
The state is heavily engaged in the economy. The TPLF, in contrast, fought for the rights of the Tigrayan people, and its first manifesto called for an independent Tigrayan state. It was with some reluctance that the TPLF was persuaded to fight for the overthrow of the Ethiopian regime. When both movements took power in , they pursued divergent agendas on the national question.
The Tigrayans, intent on bolstering Tigrayan nationalism, developed a federal structure for the Ethiopian State founded on ethnicity. Provincial boundaries were redrawn to reflect ethnic divisions. The EPLF began a policy of rapid economic growth, and the enterprises they established came into direct competition with developments across the border.
In , Eritrea issued its own currency, and this disrupted trade with Ethiopia. Internationally, Eritrea asserted its national identity so forcefully that it soon had diplomatic incidents and military confrontations with neighboring Sudan, Djibouti, and Yemen. Tigrayan hard-liners first expanded the borders of their home province to incorporate areas that were traditionally inhabited by other ethnic groups within Ethiopia, particularly the Amhara.
Then, in , they published a map of Ethiopia that incorporated large sections of Eritrea within Tigray. A border commission between the two countries, established in November , met only once and had made no progress before the conflict erupted. When news reached Asmara, the Eritrean authorities reacted by sending heavily armed reinforcements to the flash point.
Despite phone calls between the two leaders, the crisis could not be resolved. As the fighting escalated, Eritrea took over three areas of previously Ethiopian-administered territory. In February , Ethiopia seized back the border area of Badme, setting off five months of fierce fighting.
In May , following the breakdown of talks, Ethiopia launched a series of attacks to recover the rest of the areas seized in In June , under pressure from the U. These provide for a kilometer-wide security zone to facilitate Eritrean withdrawal from the previous border, the insertion of a UN force, and the demarcation of the border.
With commendable speed, the United States and Rwanda led international efforts to broker a cease-fire and end the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict. In the second half of May , a joint U.
During this period Ethiopia consolidated its position as a dominant power in the region. For its part Eritrea retreated into a militaristic, authoritarian solipsism. Its domestic policy centred on open-ended national service for the young. Its foreign policy was largely concerned with undermining the Ethiopian government across the region. This was most obvious in Somalia, where its alleged support for al-Shabaab led to the imposition of sanctions on Asmara.
The situation only began to shift with the resignation of Hailemariam Desalegn against a backdrop of mounting protest across Ethiopia, especially among the Oromo and the Amhara, and the rise to power of Abiy.
It formally ended their war. But Abiy was a different matter. Read more: Residual anger driven by the politics of power has boiled over into conflict in Ethiopia. Book talk: "Exponential: how accelerating technology is leaving us behind and what to do about it" with Azeem Azhar — Oxford, Oxfordshire.
Edition: Available editions United Kingdom.
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