In diplomacy and the shooting war, both Eritrea and Ethiopia are confident of victory

War has weakened Premier Meles Zenawi but the conflict with Eritrea has certainly not brought him down. Rumours had run through Addis Ababa that he was under house arrest and forbidden to go abroad. However, on 13 July he made an unexpected one-day trip to Nairobi and was back in the Ethiopian headlines. The trip was ostensibly to discuss the reported presence of Oromo Liberation Front fighters in northern Kenya; it also quashed the rumours.

Meles had argued strongly for a pro-Eritrean policy in meetings of the Tigray People's Liberation Front Central Committee and within the ruling Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. Straight after the conflict broke out in early May, the TPLF, following its usual procedures, held a gim gima, a self-assessment meeting, focusing on Meles' role and his pro-Eritrean line.

Much was made of his recent exchange of notes with Eritrean President Issayas Afeworki, which bypassed the EPRDF Executive Committee and the TPLF Politbureau, both of which he chairs. Meles prefers to operate by consensus and was shaken by the criticism, some of it from close colleagues, including Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin and Chief of Staff General Tsadkan Gebretensae. He also faced outspoken comments from the Tigray Regional Administration, including from regional President Gebru Asrat and former Defence Minister Siye Abraha, who now heads the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT).

Complaints have flowed in from Tigray's grassroots about two things: Eritrean activities along the border and the effects on western Tigray of the government's anti-Sudan policy. Unease has been mounting for a long time. Despite claims by Amharas that Tigray's development has been over-emphasised, most Tigrayans have seen little benefit from the new factories being built at Adua (where Meles comes from), Adigrat or Makelle. After 1994, when Tigray region acquired the rich farming land around Humera along the Sudan border, most of it was distributed to ex-TPLF fighters. With the border closed, most crops in 1996-97 were sold to Eritrean merchants, who then exported them: Tigrayans felt exploited. Last year, the Ethiopian Church Patriarch, a Tigrayan, was heckled in Axum. Other questions were raised about the Eritrean presence in the armed forces and about access that Eritreans have enjoyed at all levels. Meles has preferred advice from Eritrean allies rather than from former enemies who served in the Derg's army. Relations had been extremely close and now some Tigrayans, including Tsadkan, feel betrayed by former friends.

Meles' detractors failed to agree on little more than criticism, though the Central Committee did set up a war council headed by Siye, Seyoum and Gebru, which distances Meles from the military decision-making process. Meles held support among more ideological Committee members, including head of Organisation Tewolde Woldemariam, Alemseged Gebre Amlak of the Ideological Department and senior Politbureau member Sebhat Nega but the former MLLT Chairman, Abai Tsehaye, swung the undecided by robust responses and swift agreement to act against Eritrea. At the price of accepting the expulsion of Eritreans and a continuing military build-up, Meles kept control, if only just.

He might still prefer a negotiated settlement with Asmara but the Central Committee and the army insist on action first. He has demonstrated his 'Ethiopian-ness' (he is half Eritrean) by finally taking action against Eritrea, whose role in Ethiopia since 1991 has been heavily criticised, particularly by Amhara people. The expulsion of thousands of Eritreans opens job vacancies. Current policy is popular and has gained some ground for Meles.

The EPRDF has made no other concessions to opposition demands. It has made clear that it won't release any political prisoners or journalists (Ethiopia still detains the highest number in Africa, 21 in May) nor enter into negotiations with opposition groups 'to advance their hidden motives', as Assembly Speaker Dawit Yohannes put it. Indeed, it has taken the opportunity to accuse the OLF's new leadership and Somali-based Al Itahad al Islamia of being 'instruments of the Eritrean regime' and of getting funds and arms from Ethiopia's enemies. On 6 August, an Ethiopian battalion seized Bulo Hawo in Somalia's Gedo Region, looking for Al Itahad leaders following reports of a peace deal between it and the Somali National Front (which Ethiopia armed to fight Itahad last year). It was the third time in two years that Ethiopian troops had attacked Bulo Hawa they occupied the area around Dolo and Luq, also in Gedo, for most of 1998 as part of the campaign against Itahad.

The Sawa kids:

In Eritrea, Issayas retains full control of policy, but some military commanders query both his tactics and his strategy. Like their Ethiopian counterparts, Eritrean commanders don't doubt they can win a war but there has been anxiety about the front-line use of conscripts, the 'Sawa kids', trained at the main national service centre at Sawa, western Eritrea. Casualties were heavy on the Assab front on 12 June.

The national service programme has had its critics in the past, with hundreds fleeing to Ethiopia and elsewhere to dodge the draft. More recently Ethiopia has made propaganda by interviewing deserters. There are graver worries about the recalled veterans from the armoured and commando units, dismissed after their mutiny over pay, or lack of it, in April 1993. They have shown willingness to fight for Eritrea but a lack of commitment to Issayas.

The army's logistical problems include food and weapons shortages. Arms and ammunition have been flown in from Bulgaria and elsewhere in eastern Europe, including rockets for Eritrea's BM-21 Stalin Organ multiple rocket launchers an aircraft loaded with these crashed on 17 July near Asmara (AC Vol 39 No 15).

The cost to Eritrea is great. Even President Issayas admitted that the crisis had had an adverse effect on economic and development plans in a message celebrating the 37th anniversary of the launching of the armed struggle against Ethiopia on 1 September 1961. Remittances from Eritreans overseas do not go far. This partly explains Issayas' wooing of the Arab world: he appears to have given up on Israel for the moment but may not yet have won over Arab states despite attempts to stress Eritrea's 'historic and strategic ties' with the Arab world.

Algeria and Saudi Arabia have promised only humanitarian aid, it appears. Libya has promised weapons, though Issayas would prefer cash, to buy on the open market: Colonel Moammar el Gadaffi has a poor reputation for reliability in arms supplies. Issayas' successful visit to Tripoli at the end of July was followed by a substantial Eritrean delegation, including six ministers, headed by Trade and Industry Minister Ali Sayid Abdullah, one of few Muslims in the Politbureau of the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice. A strong advocate of standing firm over Ethiopia he is currently very close to Issayas. Issayas went on to Egypt. In Cairo he won pledges of financial aid and, reportedly, an agreement for Egyptian military advisers. Egypt affirms its neutrality in the Eritrean-Ethiopian conflict but remains worried about Ethiopian plans to build barrages on the Blue Nile, using Israeli technical expertise, and at odds with Ethiopia over Somalia.

At the end of August, Hussein 'Aydeed' visited Addis Ababa and made his peace with Ethiopia. In Somalia, Ethiopia now actively backs the creation of regional administrations. These include Puntland in the north-east, set up in July, and the Benadir administration for the Mogadishu region, installed in early August. Both face immediate opposition from clans and warlords who feel marginalised Ethiopia says it will support both with arms and military and police training. The south-western area around Kismayo, and the central Hiraan region are also attempting to move towards their own regional administrations. Various factions in all four areas have been the recipients of Ethiopian military largesse in recent months.

Political alliances and certainties in the whole region (and beyond) have been shaken up. The United States' strategy for containing Sudan has suddenly escalated while the whole concept of 'New Africa' leadership has collapsed. The military build-up along the Ethio-Eritrean border continues. Eritrea may be the more disposed to halt hostilities, since it now occupies most of the areas it claims. The propaganda war continues unabated. By the beginning of September Eritrea claimed Ethiopia had expelled some 20,000 Eritreans Ethiopia said Eritrea had thrown out more than 6,000 Ethiopians, though Africa Confidential has interviewed Ethiopian returnees on both sides of the border and found no evidence of deportation. In the last resort, both Ethiopia and Eritrea appear to want a test of strength and are building up ammunition stocks and troop numbers for the end of the rainy season, due by October.

ON THE BORDER

With the guns mostly silent along the border, the war is being waged through local media. In Addis Ababa, ETV daily broadcasts rallies country-wide supporting the war, parading mothers and wives of soldiers before the cameras to declare their commitment to victory. Films show training exercises and recruitment drives, plus the usual fund-raising for the war-front. Now satellite dishes proliferate across the border and many Eritreans watch these drives at home on their own television.

Eritrea's media have concentrated largely on the last two years of exchanges between the two governments: they'd like to convince the public that this is a long-brewed crisis which didn't begin, as Ethiopia charges, when Eritrean forces moved into Badme in May. This is hard to sell, for the state-controlled Eritrean media kept this information from their public throughout the months before the fighting, so that many Eritreans were stunned when the argument exploded into war. Eritrean officials insist that the seeds of the crisis were planted back in the early relations between the Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, and in their rupture in the mid-1980s (AC Vol 39 No 11).

That split arose after the pro-Albanian Marxist-Leninist League of Tigray, which launched the TPLF and still strongly influences it today, denounced the EPLF as 'petit-bourgeois nationalist', rebuked it for declining to agree about the social-imperialist nature of the Soviet Union and called the alliance with the EPLF 'purely tactical'. The EPLF, which had criticised the TPLF from its earliest days for demanding an independent Tigray, dismissed the MLLT as 'childish and sectarian' and castigated the TPLF for 'narrow nationalism'. These arcane differences were never resolved nor was the passion behind them deflated, though their public airing ceased when the two reforged their military alliance in 1987, to achieve the overthrow of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.

At the core of today's MLLT are Ethiopian Premier Meles Zenawi, Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin (known as Seyoum Mussa during the war), Siye Abraha and Abai Tsehaye, the party ideologue reported to be pushing the hardest anti-Eritrean line today. Abai is said to have defined the TPLF's pro-Albanian position at the height of the internecine polemics within the international communist movement in the 1980s. He heads the board that oversees the Relief Society of Tigray, which, together with the Endowment Fund for the Rehabilitation of Tigray (EFFORT) headed by Siye, manages much of the foreign aid reaching Tigray today. TPLF radio from Makelle agrees that the issues dividing the two countries are those of the 1980s. TPLF grievances include continuing Eritrean support for the Oromo Liberation Front, which opted out of the TPLF coalition in 1992.

Eritreans now say the alliance had been on the rocks for three years and that for two, relations have been merely formal, as economic differences came to the fore. Talks on Eritrea's new currency, the nakfa, lasted a year before its issue in November 1997 - and Ethiopia refused to accept it at parity with the Ethiopian birr, demanding the use of hard currency for most cross-border trade.

Border differences had simmered for 17 years before they became the pretext for military confrontation this year. Zalambessa had flown both countries' flags since hostilities ended in 1991. Today the town is under the EPLF, though many shops still advertise Pepsi Cola in Amharic - Coca Cola has a monopoly in Eritrea. The town's Tigrayan residents have fled south to Adigrat, while the Eritreans hide in caves in sheltered valleys: artillery fire across the battle lines is common.

Sudan tries hard to exploit the rift. Fatih Erwa, now Sudan's United Nations Ambassador and once the major in President Gaafar Muhammad Nimeiri's security team who headed the Sudanese side of the operations to send Ethiopian Jews to Israel, joined his former colleague, Osman Sayeed, now Sudan Ambassador to Ethiopia, in trying to persuade Ethiopia to pull out of the United States-backed alliance of frontline states supporting Sudan's opposition. Among enticements offered were transit for Ethiopian goods through Port Sudan to the frontier town of Humera and curbs on Ethiopian opposition groups operating from Sudan the OLF and other Ethiopian opposition forces have found their activities severely limited in recent months. A TPLF hard-line MLLT veteran, Siye Abraha, went to Khartoum in early August to pursue the discussion. So far, it has led only to a tacit ceasefire agreement.

The effects have been felt by both the Sudan People's Liberation Army and the Sudan Alliance Forces when the Sudanese army attacked their positions in Blue Nile province last month, Ethiopian artillery along the border remained silent. One unpublished consequence of the National Democratic Alliance summit in Cairo this month is that an NDA delegation will try to nudge leaders from Eritrea and Ethiopia towards direct contact with one another before the next NDA summit, scheduled for early September in Asmara. NDA representatives will not try to mediate but to convince the two sides to tone down their public attacks on each other and to foster a climate in which they can sit down together with the aim of hammering out a lasting truce.

OLF

Last year's abortive talks between the Ethiopian government and the Oromo Liberation Front precipitated changes in the OLF leadership. In April an extraordinary National Congress, held in Mogadishu, elected a new nine-man Executive Committee, replacing the Politbureau. Galasa Dilbo (now Chairman, formerly Secretary General) retains his position, as do three other members of the Politbureau - Dhugasa Bakakko, Ababiya Roba and Daud Ibsaa. Abdulfatah Mussa Biyyo replaces Lencho Leta as Deputy Secretary General. Other new members are: Abacaala Lata, Kumsa Gada, Mul'is Gada and Qufsaa Sabaa.

Oromo from eastern regions and Muslims now have a majority on the Executive Committee. Most of its members want an independent Oromiya and see little future in talking to Ethiopia's rulers. Most of those ousted from the Politbureau are from western and central areas, representing relatively urban, intellectual and Christian elements among the Oromo they are still members of the 44-strong National Council (replacing the Central Committee) and include: Lencho Leta Yohannes Noggo (previously in charge of information) Taha Abdi (formerly foreign affairs) Fekadu Wakjura Dr. Tadesse Eba Ibsa Gutema and Zegaye Asfaw.

The congress was a triumph for Galasa Dilbo, who wrong-footed the critics who planned to oust him. The OLF will now stop thinking about elections and revitalise its armed struggle. One immediate result was that Kenyan soldiers were called out when several hundred OLF fighters appeared in northern Kenya last month. Ethiopian government troops have been active on the Ethiopian side. The new OLF leadership hopes for Eritrean support Galasa Dilbo and others have held talks with President Isssayas Aferworki, and the Ethiopian government has sharply criticised the alliance, whose existence the OLF denies.

Eritrea is unlikely to give the OLF much practical support, but the new leadership is well placed to repair relations with the small but still active Islamic Front for the Liberation of Oromia, led by Sheikh Jarra, who was an OLF military commander in the mid-1970s. The new leadership may also form closer links with Somali movements - the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) in eastern Ethiopia, and Al-Itahaad al Islamia in Somalia itself.

The OLF and the ONLF did sign a military agreement two years ago but little came of it. The ONLF, though, split in June, when one of its factions merged with the pro-government Ethiopia Somali Democratic League (ESDL) to set up the Somali People's Democratic Party (SPDP), intended to align itself with the government in Addis Ababa. The SPDP's Chairman was the leading Somali in that government, Dr. Abdulmajeed Hussein, Minister of Transport and Communications his resignation in mid-August to work for the United Nations may mean the end of the new party.

As Eritrea attempts to play the Oromo card, Ethiopia is trying to exploit the Afar against Eritrea. A conference in Assayita, capital of the Afar state in eastern Ethiopia, brought together several Afar parties, including the Afar Revolutionary Democratic Unity Front (ARDUF) which only a few months ago was in conflict with both the Eritrean and Ethiopian governments. Now that ARDUF has declared support for Ethiopia against Eritrea, Ethiopia may back calls for a referendum that would unite Eritrea's and Ethiopia's Afars in a single Afar state, within Ethiopia. This would give Ethiopia the whole Red Sea coast of southern Eritrea, including the port of Assab. That would be a nightmare for Eritrea.

Copyright Blackwell Publishers Limited 1998 Data not available for redissemination

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