Horror and beauty of Ethiopia's war
Times of London
June 14, 1998
Marie Colvin

EXCEPT for the boom of artillery fire, the Eritrean front line yesterday might have been a beauty spot. The view of the tank crew commanded by Captain Goitan Birhani is one of ochre-tinged gorges, soaring rock formations and craggy mountains. Eucalyptus groves offer shade from the burning sun and the acacia is beginning to bloom.

The Eritrean troops are not distracted by the panorama. Their comrades man two T55 tanks hidden beneath the hanging bows of the eucalyptus. On the ridge four miles away is the Ethiopian front line. Enemy spotters watch their every move. Their own tank is hidden behind a 4ft wall of red dirt and smeared with mud to stop glints in the sun that might draw Ethiopian fire. They are well within range of enemy artillery and rocket launchers.

For hours yesterday on the front line, about six miles south of Zalambessa, which the Eritreans captured eight days ago, the two sides lobbed artillery fire at each other. In terms of this war, it was akin to a break in the fighting.

For almost two weeks now, in fits and starts, the two sides have fought vicious and unpredictable battles, hurling troops forward and then regrouping, marking their progress in the winning or losing of square miles of barren and inhospitable land.

Everything that moves is a target for both sides. A few miles before arriving at Zalambessa, a friendly officer motioned us to pull over. He was not stopping us from continuing to the front; he was pointing out one of the few water holes in the parched landscape. On his advice, we dug deep into the mud of the animal water hole and smeared our Land Rover with mud, the local camouflage.

The war is far from over. A truce in air bombing was agreed to allow foreigners to be evacuated. However, it will end at midnight tonight, according to American sources involved in attempting to mediate an end to the hostilities.

Few foreigners are left and the threat of air raids is real. Ethiopia has twice bombed the airport in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, losing two jets in the process. The airport is closed to commercial flights.

Eritrea bombed the Ethiopian town of Mekele, missing the airport but hitting a school when a pilot under fire dumped his load on the edge of town.

To outsiders it may seem obscure, reminiscent of the setting of the classic novel, Scoop - based on Evelyn Waugh's experiences in the Abyssinian conflict - in which William Boot, a hapless gardening correspondent, is sent by mistake to cover an African war and blunders around an incomprehensible battle zone.

Nor is it easy to fathom why Ethiopia and Eritrea have suddenly gone to war. The two sides have been allies for decades. The land they are fighting over holds no strategic or mineral value.

President Isayas Afewerki of Eritrea and Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of Ethiopia, were comrades in a long bush war. Theirs were supposed to be "enlightened regimes". Only last month, President Bill Clinton paid tribute to them during his tour of Africa. He described Eritrea and Ethiopia as being on the cusp of the new "African renaissance".

However, to men such as Birhani and to most Eritreans, the issue is simple. Ethiopia was gradually encroaching on their land along the border, which has never officially been demarcated, although it was generally accepted that it follows the lines established around Eritrea during its days as an Italian colony between 1890 and 1952.

On the Eritrean side, morale is high. Most of the fighters on the front line are veterans of a 30-year war Eritrea fought for independence from Ethiopia, first against the regime of Emperor Haile Selassie, then against the military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the Marxist dictator.

The fighting now is on the same territory, but all the more bitter because the Ethiopian troops the Eritreans are battling against are their former allies, fellow guerrillas with whom they united to oust Mengistu's regime in 1991.

Birhani was in one of the forward tanks that roared into Addis Ababa to overthrow Mengistu. Then he was in the Eritrean People's Liberation Army (EPLA); fighting by his side were members of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, whose members now make up the vanguard of the Ethiopian army.

Since 1991 the two countries have been on friendly terms; when Eritrea voted for independence two years later, Ethiopia agreed.

Like almost all Eritreans, Birhani, now in his T55 tank holding the front line, seems sanguine about the reversal. "War is not good," he said yesterday, squatting behind his tank in uniform and in the ubiquitous black sandals of the Eritrean regulars, and running stones through his hands.

"The Ethiopians were our friends but they became the aggressors so we were obliged to defend ourselves."

He knows well how to do so - he joined the EPLA in 1978, fought successive Ethiopian governments and stayed on in the army after independence. The long years of war have hardened the Eritrean fighters, men and women, into an efficient military machine.

The evidence of their efficacy as fighters is clear in Zalambessa, a town that is little more than a cluster of breezeblock and mud buildings with tin roofs along a narrow lane that was once the main road between Asmara and Addis Abba. Some of the roofs are now holed by shells and the tiny houses lie open to the sky or are pocked with shrapnel.

Ethiopian claims that they hold Zalembassa are patently false. The stiffening body of an Ethiopian soldier still lay along the road yesterday; women pulled their headscarves over their noses as they passed to try to block out the smell of decomposition. An arm and a head stuck out from a newly bulldozed mound of red dirt in front of the "Tigray nursery site". It is the mass grave of Ethiopian soldiers.

On the road, some Eritrean soldiers roared by in a captured Ethiopian Jeep; others were in a captured lorry still bearing Ethiopian plates. Eritrean soldiers with Kalashnikovs strolled along the streets among the returning civilians and manned the tanks hidden behind houses or under trees. Just north of the town was an Eritrean rocket launcher with a range of 15 miles.

The conflict actually began in the Badme triangle, a 250-square mile area of disputed land that lies west over the mountains from Zalambessa. Ethiopians had been moving into the area, then clashed with Eritrean soldiers who came to confront them. On that front, Ethiopia seems to have held the line so far.

Not so in Zalambessa. Until 10 days ago the town was under Ethiopian control; it is well on the Ethiopian side of the accepted border. Last Wednesday, Ethiopian troops attacked the Eritrean border post, a wooden barrier across the road on the edge of the village. Initially overwhelmed, the Eritreans fought back ferociously, driving the Ethiopians not only out of Zalambessa but 10 miles up the road, where they have now dug in.

The Eritreans show no sign of letting up. On Thursday, with two helicopters, they attacked the border town of Adigrat, just beyond a ridge that the Ethiopians still control, and killed four people.

The conflict last week broadened on to three fronts, all over disputed pieces of territory along the countries' mutual borders. The Eritreans advanced into Zalambessa. The Ethiopians advanced into the triangle of Badme. Eritrean and Ethiopian troops fought to a draw in a bloody battle near Burie, on the road to the port of Asab which landlocked Ethiopia covets. Should that fighting intensify, the war will explode. Eritrean officials pledged yesterday they would never give up their port.

Ethiopia appears to have been shocked by the ferocity of the Eritrean reaction to its incursions. It should not have been; after 30 years of war, Eritrea is a state comparable to Sparta, where almost the entire population seems to consist of soldiers, many of them women.

Ethiopian troops, except for the former Tigrayan guerrillas, are conscripts without battle experience. In battle, the Eritreans have proved superior in tactics and use of armour.

A joint mediation effort by the United States and Rwanda has failed to make any progress. A delegation of two American envoys left Asmara last night with no sign that Afewerki had made any move towards compromise. A long war could follow.