Eritrean People Research Articles

Diaspora, Digital Media, and Death Counts: Eritreans and the Politics of Memorialisation

This article analyses a war memorial established on a website by Eritreans in diaspora as an example of how diasporas are transforming the ways national politics are conducted and understood. Establishing a war memorial is normally the prerogative and responsibility of the state. In performing this task the Eritrean diaspora makes visible the failure of the state to make public important national information and to hold itself accountable to the Eritrean people. The establishment of the memorial online by the diaspora, furthermore, works to de-centre the state, symbolically at least, as the embodiment of the nation and creates an opening for alternative visions of the nation and state-citizen relations. The Internet is making possible innovative forms of diaspora political engagement and activism that challenge conventional relations of citizenship and sovereignty.

Introduction to Special Issue: Postliberation Eritrea

Introduction:Postliberation Eritrea Tekle M. Woldemikael (bio) annotated “O.K.” “⨁” Twenty-two years ago the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), armed with Kalashnikov rifles and tanks, entered Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, announcing that it was liberating Eritrea from Ethiopian rule. The thirty-years' war between the Eritrean nationalist front and the Ethiopian government has been termed the long struggle (gedli) (Cliff and Davidson 1988). Right after winning the war, in 1991, the EPLF was on the world stage, struggling to establish a new political order in Eritrea, replacing the Ethiopian regime that had ruled from 1952 to 1991. This had included a ten-year federation (1952-1961) and thirty years of direct rule (1962-1991). Eritrea is the name given in 1889 by the former Italian colonial administration to a strip of land on the Red Sea coast of North East Africa. In 1992, the EPLF leader Isaias Afwerki declared that the Eritrean People's Liberation Front would be the provisional government of Eritrea, thus assuming the role of running the state institutions left by the collapse of the Ethiopian administration. Soon after conducting an internationally supervised referendum on April 23-25, 1993, the provisional government of Eritrea declared itself an independent state. As a new African state, Eritrea received immediate membership in the Organization of African Unity and the United Nations as well as recognition from the major world powers and the neighboring African countries. This support gave the new state legitimate power along with authority over its territory and citizens. The referendum gave the new Eritrean state an international mandate to rule the Eritrean population and the land. The referendum was the crowning achievement of the EPLF, which had just won the longest armed conflict in Africa's history. In 1994, the EPLF conducted its first postliberation congress and reconstituted itself as the only party of the new state, calling itself the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). The authors in this special issue treat the PFDJ's construction of dominance and the rupture of the national consensus that had been established by a referendum and a declaration of independence in 1993. The essays deal with the fragments of culturally constructed social divisions, such as young people, refugees, and diasporas, and their relationship to the nation and the state. The Eritrean state can be characterized as a state of exception (Agamben 1998, 2005), a state in which the leader of the nation, Isaias Afwerki, used the crisis following the border war with Ethiopia (1998-2000) as a cover to exert absolute control over the society and state and consolidate his power [End Page v] over the nation. The papers focus on the structures of domination and sub-ordination that have emerged in postliberation, postindependence Eritrea. They contend with the cultural politics of Eritrea and show how certain people's exclusion is unsustainable in the long term. They pay special attention to young people, the generation of Eritreans who are fully affected by the domination of, and exclusion and disconnection from, the dominant culture. The articles collectively bring into question the popular wisdom that Eritrea's political instability would end once the political issues of the war between the liberation movements and the Ethiopian government ended. This demonstrated that gaining sovereignty or autonomy was insufficient to resolve the political, economic, and social crisis in Eritrea This introductory essay is divided into five parts including (a) a brief exploration of the rise and fall of Eritrea from the group of African Renaissance states and (b) how it became a state of exception ruled by an arbitrary and absolutist state; (c) how the absolutist state created a bifurcated social hierarchy in which the population was divided into "citizens" and "subjects" with differentiated gradation of citizenship in relation to the state (Mamdani 1996, Ong 1999); and (d) how this "graduated citizenship" has created a "Refugee-Diaspora Nexus" that could explain the current refugee crisis in Eritrea. This introductory essay ends with a brief description of the articles in this volume. Collectively, the articles provide a deeper examination of the refugee-state-diaspora nexus through five case studies: (1) Assefaw Bariagaber's exploration of how globalization has facilitated the...

Myths, memories and metaphors: recollecting landscape change in the Eritrean highlands

Using the case of Eritrea, this article investigates why people's visual recollections and oral accounts of past landscapes can be an unreliable source of accurate information on environmental change. In Eritrea, a longstanding narrative exists that claims that forest cover throughout the country has decreased from 30% of land cover in the late nineteenth century to less than 1% today. Yet popular recollections are contradicted by available archival and photographic evidence, all of which indicates that the landscape has changed far less dramatically than generally imagined. This article explores why a disjunction between the historical evidence regarding the extent and pattern of deforestation in the central Eritrean highlands and people's memories and beliefs about this process should have evolved. Drawing on recent findings in social psychology, and placing this within prevailing debates on landscape and memory, it seeks to explain why visual recollections may be strongly influenced by the metaphoric and symbolic meaning that landscapes hold for individuals and communities. In particular it looks at how memories about the process of deforestation may be shaped less by actual observation of a physical event than by the nature of people's interaction with past authorities, and by individual experiences of economic hardship and scarcity. The article also looks at how the popular myth of a supposedly once prosperous landscape in Eritrea has been employed and encouraged by those in power – either as a justification for various colonial policies or, in the case of the present government, as a powerful impetus to nation building.

Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora (review)

Reviewed by: Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora David Bozzini (bio) Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora, by Tricia Redeker Hepner Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009; pp. 249. $55 cloth/$22.50 paper. Over the last decade, the Eritrean police state has practiced blatant repression, even to the extent of eating "its own children," as the famous expression sadly goes. In short, government purges sweep national heroes and loyalists from the party-state leadership, and ordinary citizens and National Service members are subjected to arbitrary violence. Tricia Redeker Hepner witnessed such events while carrying out fieldwork research in Eritrea in 2001; thereafter, she followed the echoes and reverberations of the government's increasingly repressive politics within the Eritrean diaspora in the United States. [End Page 141] The result of her research is an impressive study of the social history of Eritrean political dynamics that roots the current Eritrean political situation in the transnational history of the country's nation-building process over the last four decades. Hepner's book revolves particularly around the various contributions made by the Eritrean diaspora to the struggle for independence and its attempts to participate in postindependence governance and reconstruction (xii). Hepner builds her arguments around the extensive contemporary debates and the conceptual framework of political transnationalism, reminding us that Eritrea comprises an exemplary case of the transnational nation-state. The author's objective in exploring the complexity of Eritrean political transnationalism is to elucidate its ambivalent dimensions. Along these lines, Hepner convincingly demonstrates "the contradictory nature of transnationalism as both an emancipating and repressive force" (104). This represents a major contribution to the theory of transnational political processes. The author skillfully traces the uncertainties, the mistrust, and the conflicts that shape the rugged terrain of Eritrean politics. As she puts it at the beginning of the book, "The contemporary dilemmas associated with transnational political struggle and the encounter between territorial nationalism and globally constructed models of political and social power" (xiii) represent her main concern. More precisely, she recounts the major conflicts and tensions over identity, nationalism, and the various political agendas of the armed movements, particularly the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPFL), and the different groups scattered across Eritrea and the United States during the historical evolution of the struggle for independence and the building of the independent state. In highlighting the significant internal heterogeneity of these organizations, Hepner also provides a timely analysis of the unceasing cycles of consolidation and disintegration of the major historical political factions, including the current ruling party. Based on a variety of sources, including ethnographic accounts and the fruits of archival research, this study navigates a sophisticated blend of microhistories and global processes. Here, multisited research perspectives truly reveal the heuristic potential of transnational studies to explain long-lasting sociopolitical processes. This well-written and touching book clarifies historical legacies, continuities, and transformations, as well as the emergence of new processes. But at the same time, Hepner avoids the [End Page 142] common trap of overemphasizing connections at the expense of the ruptures and cracks also present in these processes. Hepner's narrative is chronological: the six chapters of her book provide an analysis of crucial political events that occurred between the 1970s and the first decade of the twenty-first century. The author, thus, takes up the challenge of drawing continuities and ruptures across four discrete periods: the various stages of the armed struggle for Eritrean independence; the immediate postindependence period, marked by euphoric state-building processes, the EPLF's accession to power, and its transformation into the Peoples Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ); the Ethio-Eritrean War (1998-2000); and finally the current postwar political descent into repression and violence. The chapters are extensively documented with rich ethnographic and archival materials that pull the reader close to the reality that is being analyzed. The author's careful and well-balanced analyses of these materials allow her to explain the various subjective political positions and "different interpretations of the past and present" (xiii) that are necessary to unveil the multifarious and ceaseless tensions occurring among...

Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora (review)

Reviewed by: Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora Lucia Ann McSpadden Tricia Redeker Hepner , Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles: Political Conflict in Eritrea and the Diaspora. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011. 272 pp. Soldiers, Martyrs, Traitors, and Exiles is, as one reviewer stated, "a brave, carefully researched book." It is brave because of Hepner's careful probing, sharply investigative, and conceptual work. She again and again links people and events over the course of the decades of the Eritrean struggle for independence, the hopeful beginning of rebuilding the nation, and the painful—at times heartbreaking—loss of hope and possibilities as Eritrea becomes more militarized and the government more oppressive. As Hepner peels away the layers of government responses to actions of persons inside Eritrea and in the diaspora, she reveals the connections and their effects during the early independence movement and the current government of Eritrea upon Eritreans in exile in Western countries. On a personal note, I, like Hepner, walked down Liberation Avenue in the mid-1990's at the time of the anniversary of liberation. The energy and hope was palpable—it was a time of coming together across ethnic divisions and histories, a time of commitment to the vision of a new, free Eritrea. As I read [End Page 783] this book, that experience washed over me with a deep sadness as I engaged with the realities which Hepner presents in such layered detail. The strengths of Hepner's work are multiple. Her question of "How and why does the state seek to control its citizens both at home and abroad so effectively and with what consequences for whom?" (23) provides the direction for her detailed political history. She explores the liberation struggle, independence, the beginnings of a "new" Eritrea—replete with a complex and visionary constitution-building process, the shift to a nation increasingly restrictive, the border war with Ethiopia which provides convenient rationale for militarizing the nation of Eritrea, the heightened oppression of open debate and the development of what one Eritrean calls "a military prison" (McSpadden 2010:302). Hepner demonstrates how the transnational nature of the Eritrean experience was, in fact, one of the strong components of the liberation struggle and continues to be a vibrant aspect of the nation-building enterprise post independence. She explores direct government influence on exile organizations and relationships, clearly peeling away the layers of influence intended to forge and/or maintain a particular nationalist identity, one tied to the goals and actions of the Eritrean government. Partly because the Eritrean situation is currently so fraught with conflict, this extends what we often take into account when we discuss transnational relationships. Within this multi-layered history, Hepner links what happens within these processes to the Eritreans in diaspora as they continue to relate to Eritrea itself, the liberation struggle, and nation-building all-the-while rebuilding their own lives in new lands. This linkage, which provides the title for the book, is a major contribution of Hepner's work. Hepner's historical probing of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), its internal struggles, as well as its fractured and conflicted relationship with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) is significant. Although others have explored this, Hepner takes the analysis to a deeper and more nuanced level as she shows how the conflict and distrust continued—and continues—to affect the actions and analysis of Eritreans as they develop "distinctive forms of nationalist identity" (34). The reader is led through numerous examples of how Eritreans in exile are shaped by their political loyalties prior to exile, most critically whether or not they were allied with the ELF or the EPLF. The effect upon the exiles is both in relation to what is happening in Eritrea as well as within the various and connected Eritrean communities in exile, thus, this is a strong presentation of the [End Page 784] realities of the transnational complexity of refugees, migrants, and exile. Through this, she demonstrates the links between nationalism, political identity, and exile—a contribution which goes beyond the particularities of the Eritrean situation. I am especially appreciative of Hepner's use of interviews and...

African Law of Coups and the Situation in Eritrea: A Test for the African Union's Commitment to Democracy

AbstractThis article contends that the severely repressive manner in which Eritrea has been governed in the last ten years violates the right of the Eritrean people to democratic governance. In particular, the refusal of the transitional Government of Eritrea (GoE) to end its transitional tenure in utter defiance of its own promises, transitional laws and the Constitution of Eritrea fits the definition of unconstitutional change of government proscribed by the African Union (AU). This article calls upon the AU's Peace and Security Council to urge the GoE expeditiously to establish democratic governance in accordance with regional, international and Eritrea's own legal standards. Should this demand fall upon deaf ears, this article calls for the AU to impose sanctions on the GoE.

The Eritrean Long March: The Strategic Withdrawal of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), 1978–1979

This article examines the controversial Strategic Withdrawal of Eritrean fighters (EPLF) in the face of Soviet-backed Ethiopian offensives during the Eritrean War of Independence of 1961–91. It highlights the long-term effects of these decisive battles and argues that despite immediate Eritrean setbacks and Ethiopian successes in these encounters, the ultimate strengths and weaknesses of the two adversaries first became apparent during the Withdrawal. Eventually, the Eritrean independence fighters decisively won the war because, as a guerrilla army, they were more adaptable to the fast changing conditions on the ground. Blinded by their belief in armaments and numbers, their far superior foe neglected to correctly appraise the situation and improvise strategy accordingly. This article stops in 1980 when the EPLF went over to the tactical offensive.

The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (review)

Reviewed by: The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa Richard Reid The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa. By Gebru Tareke. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009. ISBN 978-0-300-14163-4. Maps. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. Pp. xx, 437. $45.00. Academic scholarship on African military history remains underdeveloped within the larger field, but Gebru Tareke has made a major contribution over the last twenty years: his work on the Ethiopia-Somalia war of 1977–78, and in particular on peasant uprisings through Ethiopia’s twentieth century has established his reputation as one of northeast Africa’s foremost historians. The region has been one of the most violent zones anywhere in the world since the wars of liberation and attendant violent upheaval across Africa and Asia in the 1950s and 1960s. In this book, part of the Yale University series on military history, the region’s conflicts between the 1960s and 1990s are finally given the serious treatment they deserve–and this is military history of a high standard, bringing together a range of movements and conflicts, which are often dealt with separately by northeast African specialists, into an integrated narrative. [End Page 1389] As one might expect of Gebru Tareke, the book is impressively researched, with some fascinating detail unearthed from both archives and oral informants in Ethiopia itself–though less from the Eritrean and Somali sides, directly at least. After discussing revolutionary war in its wider context, the main body of the book is organised in two parts. The first deals with the various armies themselves, their development, aims and structures. Thus there is an examination of the Eritrean guerrilla movements, from the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) to the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front; the rise of the Tigrayan nationalist movement, culminating in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), now in government in Ethiopia; and the armed forces of the Marxist Derg state of the 1970s and 1980s. In the next section, the author turns his attention to ‘battlefield Ethiopia’. He discusses at length the Ogaden war between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977–78; the major clashes between the EPLF and the Derg–around the former’s rear base at Nakfa, and the battles at Afabet and Massawa; and the victory of the TPLF over government forces at Shire in 1989, before describing the advance of the combined liberation forces on Addis Ababa in 1991. The analysis is detailed and frequently incisive, although the prose is occasionally lazy: TPLF leader Meles Zenawi’s rise to power was “methodical and crafty. He seems to have known what he wanted and how to get it”; EPLF leader Isaias Afeworki had “imposing physique and good looks,” and “would have been star material anywhere but chose to be a liberation fighter.” Yet these lapses do not significantly undermine the telling of the story. The book has an epilogue in which the author offers some brief remarks about the Eritrean-Ethiopian war of 1998–2000. Gebru’s reversion to the cliché that this was a “foolish war”–it may have been tragic, but “foolish” is inappropriate–reflects an insufficient appreciation of the problematic nature of EPLF-TPLF relations over the longer term. The two movements collaborated against a common enemy, for a time; they were never the ‘close comrades’ implied in this book. Indeed, the book would have benefited from a sharper exploration of the ethnic and political natures of the military contests during the c.1960-c.1990 period; a deeper discussion of the historical role of violence in Ethiopian and Eritrean political culture would have enhanced the narrative. This said, however, The Ethiopian Revolution is a welcome contribution to the growing body of literature on northeast Africa’s modern wars and their continuing ramifications. Richard Reid School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London London, United Kingdom Copyright © 2009 The Society for Military History

Does the EPLF (Eritrean People's Liberation Front) qualify to be a learning organization? A modern systems theory perspective

This article uses the framework modern systems theory as elaborated by Peter Senge (1990) to examine the EPLF (Eritrean People's Liberation Front) as organizational system by assessing the Front's ...

Transnational governance and the centralization of state power in Eritrea and exile

During the Eritrean war of independence from Ethiopia (1961–91) the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front developed institutionalized transnational strategies that linked dispersed refugees and exiles to the nationalist movement in the Horn of Africa. Upon independence, these institutions and strategies were maintained for purposes of nation-state building. This article shows how state-directed transnationalism and deterriorialized patterns of governance have contributed to the centralization of state power in Eritrea and the development of civil society outside the country. Ethnographic and historical analysis of state and civil society institutions highlights how transnationalism enables new forms of political and social action while facilitating state power and repression, including human rights abuses, warfare and militarism. Moreover, it is suggested that the Eritrean state seeks to control transnational institutions in order to retain sovereignty and reject foreign, neo-liberal interventions associated with globalization.

War and remembrance: orality, literacy and conflict in the Horn

This paper is concerned with the portrayal of conflict through the written word and oral recollection, and the popular perception of war over time, with particular reference to Ethiopia and Eritrea between the eighteenth and the twentieth centuries. It seeks to explore the roles played by the regional chronicles and traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and by orality and literacy in the modern age of armed struggle and revolution, in the creation and assertion of identities. The basic aim of the paper is to demonstrate continuity between apparently distinct forms of ‘war and remembrance’. The first is the chronicle tradition of the Ethiopian highlands, dating back several centuries, both contemporary and retrospective in composition, and in which the seminal role of conflict is continually emphasised. The second is the rhetoric and symbolism of the modern era of liberation struggle in Eritrea, as represented by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front. In this context, the memory of war, and the articulation of that memory in various forms, is as crucial as war itself in the creation and consolidation of identity, most dramatically in nationalist discourse.

Gender and post-conflict civil society

Women have historically participated in revolutionary/liberation movements. A consensus among scholars working in the field suggests that once the broader aims of the movement have been achieved, women's public role and the concern for gender differentiated interests diminish in the post-conflict society. The aim of this study is to apply this hypothesis using the case study of Eritrea. Eritrea offers an opportunity to study a modern, successful revolutionary movement that relied heavily upon women's contributions both as support personnel and as front-line soldiers. Preliminary evidence suggests that Eritrea is following the pattern of many other post-conflict societies. Several questions are addressed here: Does the hypothesis which suggests women's participation is welcomed during a revolutionary struggle, but discouraged in post-conflict society, hold true in the Eritrean case? What role did women play in Eritrean independence and what role do they currently play? Have the reforms enacted by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) carried forward under the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ)? What role does women's inclusion play in creating a viable civil society? How has the generational aspect of women's military service affected society's overall perception of women?

Caught in the headlights of history: Eritrea, the EPLF and the post-war nation-state

A little over a decade after the achievement of independence, Eritrea is confronted by a range of social and political problems, problems which are rooted both in the nation's past and in the ruling movement's interpretation of that past. This paper is concerned with the widening gulf between the nation-state, as envisaged by the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) during the liberation struggle and as currently ‘imagined’ by the government, and the socio-political reality. Eritrean society is now marked by widening divisions between the ‘struggle generation’ and the membership of the former EPLF on the one hand, and large sections of the remainder of the population, notably youth. The 1998–2000 war with Ethiopia, the root causes of which are as yet unresolved, has proved more destructive than was apparent even at the time, and has been used by the state as a vindication of the EPLF's particular interpretation of the past. Political and social repression, rooted in a militaristic tradition and a profound fear of disunity, has intensified since the war. In this paper the current situation is examined in terms of the deep frustration felt by younger Eritreans, the urban–rural divide, the state-level determination to cling to the values and the aims of the liberation struggle, and the position of Eritrea in international politics.

Redeeming the failed promise of democracy in Eritrea

In 1991, after a long, arduous and highly dynamic struggle that transformed many of the bases of their society, the Eritrean people won their freedom. The attempt began to reconstruct their war-ravaged society. But, following the renewal of conflict with Ethiopia in 1998 and continuation of hostilities, many of those earlier gains have been set back and the movement towards popular democracy reversed. The nature of Eritrea’s post-independence state, the earlier struggle for gender equality and the current crackdown on dissent are here illuminated.

From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front (review)

Reviewed by: From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front Nelson Kasfir Pool, David . 2001. From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Oxford: James Currey; Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press. 206 pp. $22.95 (paper). The Eritrean People's Liberation Movement (EPLF) capped the longest guerrilla struggle in Africa, and perhaps the world, with victory in 1991, and since then as the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) has ruled Eritrea with an iron hand. Formerly an Italian colony, Eritrea was controlled by a British military administration from the time it defeated the Italian military until 1952, when the United Nations agreed to its federation with Ethiopia. By 1962, Ethiopia had undermined the federation and absorbed Eritrea. Nationalist response in the 1950s led to guerrilla war. Pool provides us with a full-length treatment of the EPLF from its origins in the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) to its military victory and first decade as the independent government of Eritrea. The penchant of guerrilla leaders for secrecy, a practice essential for survival, makes the formation and development of guerrilla organization an extraordinarily difficult subject for study. It will be a long time before a complete account of the EPLF is possible. We should be grateful to David Pool for the depth of information and subtle social analysis he has presented here. The central question in the book is an important one: how did the EPLF manage to establish itself as an autonomous and cohesive organization, able to defeat and drive out an existing guerrilla organization and gain wide acceptance in all parts of a society marked by religious and ethnic [End Page 124] cleavages? In contrast, as one would expect of any guerrilla organization in a deeply divided society, the ELF was organized on ethnic lines and had a strong Muslim orientation in response to Ethiopian support for Christian organizations. Incorporation by Ethiopia had been in part the consequence of religious divisions that made some Coptic Christians and Tigrinya-speakers allies of their Ethiopian counterparts, leaving Muslim groups to form the nationalist opposition and later the ELF. Pool takes a roughly chronological approach to his analysis of the internal organization of the EPLF, its relations to the population, and its military victories, which led to international recognition and ultimate success. His discussion of the relation of the EPLF and ethnic groups is not conceptually consistent. When he provides ethnographic information about each of the nine significant Eritrean ethnic groups, he implies that each holds a single unchanging homogeneous identity. Yet when he discusses the impact of competing empires on them, as well as their migrations, he explicitly argues that their identities should be considered fluid, not static. In a sophisticated analysis of early Eritrean nationalism, he further shows that nationalist movements blurred sectarian identities without dissolving them, and that the EPLF used cultural differences among ethnic groups ("nationalities") instrumentally to undercut the religious cleavage represented in its competition with the ELF. Nevertheless, he also suggests that hierarchical cultures may contribute to a sense of "stateness" within a guerrilla organization. Does he think the EPLF became an autonomous and cohesive organization because its leaders came from, and first recruited from, settled hierarchical populations long exposed to imperial rule? Finally, he also says he wants to represent the EPLF leaders' view of these "nationalities," even though their view seems considerably more static than fluid. Taken together, these insights into ethnography on the one hand and social change on the other provide an ambiguous contribution to his central question: did the differences among groups demonstrate the difficulty or the relative ease with which the EPLF overcame ethnic and religious cleavages? In the core of the book, Pool discusses the organizational growth and eventual dominance of the EPLF. It is difficult to tell whether pragmatism or the leaders' application of Marxism-Leninism is more important. In either case, overcoming ethnic division was a central goal. Military success against its internal rival may also be part of the explanation of the cohesion and autonomy of the EPLF. Pool traces the unification process of the different groups of defectors that became the EPLF. The critical early decisions were agreement on...

From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front

From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People's Liberation Front

Eritrea: transition to dictatorship, 1991-2003

Eritrea's image in the early 1990s as a peaceful and well-ordered state was coloured by the euphoria of independence following a military victory over the formidable army of Ethiopia. Against all odds, the country seceded in 1991 and attained international recognition in 1993. Emphasis on self-reliance reliance and hard work made it easy to overlook the ingrained authoritarianism and basic intolerance of the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) leadership. Eritreans and foreign observers believed the promise made by the victorious guerilla leadership that Eritrea would learn the lessons of post-colonial African history and would not repeat its mistakes. The EPLF, renamed the Popular Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) in February 1994, reiterated this promise so frequently and eloquently that even the most cynical of persons was inclined to hope Eritrea would be spared the nightmare of dictatorship.

National Identity and Historical Mythology in Eritrea and Somaliland

National Identity and Historical Mythology in Eritrea and Somaliland Patrick Gilkes The 1990s saw the appearance of two new states in the Horn of Africa—Eritrea and Somaliland. Eritrea achieved de facto recognition in 1991 after a 30-year struggle against the central government of Ethiopia, and its existence was formally recognized by the international community two years later.1 Somaliland also declared itself independent in 1991 after a ten-year struggle against the regime of Siad Barre in Mogadishu; it has yet to be internationally recognized though its existence is widely accepted. Eritrea's struggle for independence has been largely portrayed as a struggle within the framework of decolonization in Africa, albeit slightly delayed (see Iyob 1995, Sherman 1980, Markakis 1987). Somaliland has used the existence of a five-day period of independence from the colonial power, Britain, to put forward an anticolonial argument for its right to independence from the former Italian Somaliland, with which it was united in the Republic of Somalia from 1960 to 1991 (see Trouval 1963, Contini 1969, Rajagopal and Carroll 1992). Both Eritrea and Somaliland won their independence by military means, and both have made much of their successes in this area, especially Eritrea. Indeed, it might be argued that the Eritrean emphasis on this contributed largely to the hubris that appears to have been a major cause of its defeat in 2000 by Ethiopia; subsequent events suggest that no lessons have been learnt (see Gilkes 2002). In fact, it was the collapse of the central power in both cases that was the major factor in the guerrilla successes, and while the military victories of the fronts certainly contributed, they were only one among a number of significant factors. [End Page 163] In pursuit of state creation, both Eritrea and Somaliland have embarked, if not always systematically, on the creation of separate histories to buttress their claims to independence. In Eritrea this has involved the invention of a previously unknown Eritrean identity prior to Italian colonialism as well as an equally unacknowledged resistance to the Italian colonial conquest (see Jordan Gebre-Medhin 1989, Okbagzhi Yohannes 1991). It was, in part, a necessity. Three of Eritrea's nine ethnic groups straddle its border with Ethiopia. The largest group is made up of Tigrinya speakers, who constitute about 50 percent of the Eritrean population and have historically been major players, indeed an integral element, in all of the "Ethiopian" empires to the south, from Axum in the first century AD to Haile Selassie and Mengistu in the twentieth century. Eritrea in its entirety was incorporated in the Ethiopian Empire between 1962 and 1993, enlarging the empire to its greatest extent. The creation of an acceptable history of the new Eritrean state is a process that started, understandably, within the guerrilla struggle before independence. It was an integral part of the propaganda war and military conflicts between the original Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). These split the Eritrean liberation movement throughout the 1970s and 1980s, and the divisive process has continued since 1991. The effects have become very clear since Ethiopia's victory in 2000, and to a considerable degree they underpin the divisions within the EPLF, now the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). The insistence by the EPLF, the victor in the second Eritrean civil war with the ELF in 1981–1982, on the independence war as an anti-colonial struggle was, perhaps, a necessity at the time, but it was more of an issue for debate than an intellectual certainty. A central problem for the EPLF was that the historic identity of a substantial part of Eritrea's population and land area was identical to that of northern Ethiopia. Eritrea, as an entity in its own right, was given territorial definition by colonialism, and an Eritrean identity was forged during the colonial period. Nevertheless, a significant element in the colony of Eritrea, the Kebessa, has its own potential "motherland" in the Ethiopian empire state of which it had historically been a part for centuries. The Kebessa [End Page 164] was where the Christian, highland, agricultural, and Tigrean elements of the population were concentrated...

From guerrillas to government: the Eritrean People's Liberation Front

Part I Reaction to the past: introduction the social and historical context thepolitical context. Part II The Eritrean People's Liberation Army: Introduction the formation and organization of the Front organizing the masses the road to liberation. Part III Independence: introduction organizing Eritrea.

Inside the EPLF: the origins of the people's party’ & its role in the liberation of Eritrea

At the third congress of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in February 1994, delegates voted to transform the 95,000‐person organisation into a mass political movement, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ). The congress gave the PFDJ a transitional mandate to draw the general population into the political process and to prepare the country for constitutional democracy over the next four years. Near the close of the three‐day conference, Isaias Afwerki, the country's acting president, surprised many of those present with an announcement that a clandestine marxist political party had guided the Front for almost 20 years and that it had been disbanded in 1989, shortly before the end of the independence war. Since then, however, there has been little public discussion of the historical role of the party or its legacy. Drawing on interviews with key participants, this paper explores the origins of what was known as the Eritrean People's Revolutionary Party and its impact on the liberation struggle during the nearly two decades of its clandestine existence. Questions I address include: How, why and by whom was the party formed? How did it function in relation to the Front as a whole? How did this change from the 1970s to the 1980s? And why was the decision taken to disband the party in 1989? Still to be examined is the party's legacy in the post‐liberation era and how its political culture and mode of operation shapes the contemporary political landscape.