The Guardian (UK)
Tuesday June 16, 1998
Despite yesterday's news that Eritrea and Ethiopia are halting air strikes, the fighting looks set to go on, David Gough in Adigrat writes
Letgebriel Getsadik was making tea in her two-room house in Adigrat, northern Ethiopia, when she heard the plane overhead. She remembers shouts from the street calling on people to flee their houses. Picking up her two-month-old baby Angosom, she rushed out towards the shelter of a tree, but both she and the baby were hit by flying shrapnel from cluster bombs dropped by the Eritrean jet.
Goitom Mesele, a 27-year-old teacher, lying on his side on the bed next to her in Adigrat hospital, nursed back wounds suffered during the raid, which killed four and injured 30.
He was collecting the food distributed to people like himself displaced by the fighting when the bombs fell. "It was as if the skies were raining metal. I don't know why the Eritreans are doing this to us, but I do know that until they leave our land we are going to fight. If God allows it, I will take revenge for this cowardly attack."
The victims of this bombing raid on the village of Adigrat last Thursday were the latest civilian casualties in the border conflict, which threatens to escalate into all-out war.
Ethiopians are shaking their heads in disbelief.
"This is bad news for Africa," a Western diplomat in the capital, Addis Ababa, said. "This conflict just doesn't make sense to anybody."
A taxi driver in Addis Ababa, throwing his newspaper in disgust through the open car window, said: "This fighting is beyond belief. Have we not suffered enough already through 30 years of war?"
As the conflict threatens to escalate, the mood in Addis Ababa remains calm and life continues as normal. But in the north people speak of nothing but the fighting with their former ally in the civil war against the Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam.
Kiros, from the village of Wukro, is 17 and afraid he may fail his exams next week. "I have not been studying since this conflict began. We are all very worried about this war and think of little else," he said.
Tamrat Yilma, a tour guide, has ferried tourists about northern Ethiopia for 19 years. Zalambesa, a frequent stopover, is now in Eritrean hands. "This town has always been in Ethiopia," he said. "Now the Eritreans will have us believe it is theirs."
Observers and participants alike wonder why the war is being fought. The disputed territory is a rocky outcrop reminiscent of a giant stone quarry. Eritrea and the northern Ethiopian areas bordering it are mostly rock, the land infertile and inhospitable.
Pride seems to be the primary motive. Tekle Mesfin, a water resources manager from the town of Adi Hageray, on the edge of the disputed area, said: "All Eritreans, from the president down to a common shoe cleaner, think that they are superior to us Ethiopians."
Nevertheless, Ethiopians are eager to stress that the Eritrean president, Isaias Afewerki, and not the Eritrean people are to blame.
"Isaias is a madman," said Aylew Kassa, a sergeant in the Ethiopian army whose wife is Eritrean. "We have no quarrel with the people of Eritrea."
A professor of contemporary history at Addis Ababa University suspects that the conflict is economically motivated.
"Isaias resents the economic development going on across the border in Ethiopia," he said. "He has seen one after another of his grandiose economic schemes fail and he wants to punish Ethiopia for its successes."
Ethiopia has enjoyed economic growth rates of about 6 per cent for the past five years. But both countries stand to lose economically from the conflict. Eritrea imports half its food from landlocked Ethiopia, which in turn brings in 70 per cent of its imports through the Eritrean port of Assab.
The diversion of this trade to Djibouti will cost Eritrea dear. Similarly, Ethiopia faces fuel and transport shortages as trucks are requisitioned to carry troops and supplies to the front.
Eritrea has rejected peace proposals which require it to withdraw its troops to their pre-May 6 positions, and Addis Ababa refuses to accept any form of mediation while Eritreans occupy Ethiopian land.
An Ethiopian government spokesman said: "There is no country in the world that negotiates under occupation." Mr Mesfin agrees. "If my neighbour wants to take over one of the rooms of my house, then I must kick him out before I start to talk with him again."