New States, Old Wars

Abstract

This chapter places emphasis on the legacy of violent liberation war in both Ethiopia and Eritrea since the early 1990s. The chapter is concerned with the institutionalization of violence in the modern states of the region, manifest in the successor movements to the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF)in Ethiopia and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF)in Eritrea. The authoritarianism of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front, and the ongoing utility of ethnicity as organizational tool, is explored, as is the militarism at the heart of Eritrea as a ‘frontier state’. Continuing conflict, most dramatically in terms of Oromo nationalist violence, wars in Somalia and their regional implications, and the recent war between Eritrea and Ethiopia, is examined in terms of both historical pattern and carefully crafted notions of destiny.