CONCEPT – ETHIOPIA-ERITREA CONFLICT

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 CONCEPT – ETHIOPIA-ERITREA CONFLICT

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• Eritrean–Ethiopian War : This was a long-running conflict in the Horn of Africa region. The actual war took place between May 1998 to June 2000. Peace was agreed to in 2018, twenty years after the war started. The disputed territory at the heart of the conflict was 'Badme'.
• Ruination on both sides : Both Eritrea and Ethiopia are poor countries, but spent huge money on the war, suffering massive casualties also. The war could not change anything materially.
• History of the conflict : 

1. From 1961 until 1991, Eritrea fought a long war of independence against Ethiopia. 
2. The Ethiopian Civil War began in September 1974 when the Marxist Derg staged a coup d'état against Emperor Haile Selassie.
3. The Civil War lasted until 1991 when the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) — a coalition of rebel groups - overthrew the Derg government and installed a transitional government in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa.
4. The Derg government had been weakened by their loss of support due to the fall of communism in Eastern Europe. That was so as the USSR had collapsed in 1990.
5. During the civil war (1974-1991), the groups fighting the Derg government had a common enemy, so rebels had allied with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). 
6. In 1991, as part of the United Nations-facilitated transition of power, it was agreed that the EPLF should set up an autonomous transitional government in Eritrea. A referendum would be held in Eritrea to find out if Eritreans wanted to secede from Ethiopia. 
7. The referendum was held and the vote was overwhelmingly in favour of independence. 
8. In April 1993 independence was achieved and the new state joined the United Nations.
9. Earlier, in 1991, the transitional government of Eritrea and that of Ethiopia had agreed to set up a commission to look into any problems that arose between the two former wartime allies over the foreseen independence of Eritrea. 
10. Unfortunately, this commission was not successful, and relations between the governments of the two sovereign states deteriorated.
11. Determining the border became a major conflict, and in November 1997 a border committee was set up to try to resolve that specific dispute.
12. Before independence, the line of the border was just a demarcation line between federated provinces (of Ethiopia), and the two governments tacitly agreed that the border should remain as it had been immediately before independence. 
13. But after independence the border became an international frontier, and the two governments could not agree on the line that the border should take along its entire length, and they looked back to the colonial period treaties between Italy and Ethiopia for resolution. But they could not.
14. It is commonly accepted that Eritrea broke international law and started the war by invading Ethiopia in 1998.
15. At the end of the war in 2000, Ethiopia held all of the disputed territory and had advanced into Eritrea. A peace treaty was signed with Eritrea in 2000.
16. After the war ended, the Eritrea–Ethiopia Boundary Commission, a body founded by the UN, established that the Badme disputed territory belonged to Eritrea. But Ethiopia still occupies the territory near Badme, including the town of Badme. 
17. Cessation of hostilities : On 18 June 2000, the parties agreed to a comprehensive peace agreement and binding arbitration of their disputes under the Algiers Agreement. 
18. The economies of both countries were already weak as a result of decades of cold-war politics, civil war and drought. The war exacerbated these problems, resulting in food shortages. Prior to the war, much of Eritrea's trade was with Ethiopia, and much of Ethiopia's foreign trade relied on Eritrean roads and ports.
19.  Later, Ethiopia in 2018 was weary from months of anti-government protests demanding greater freedoms from a repressive ruling coalition. When PM Hailemariam Desalegn resigned, a relatively little-known young leader took his place.
20.  Abiy quickly surprised the country with a wave of reforms, but the gesture of peace to Eritrea was the most unexpected. 
21. On 5 June 2018, the ruling coalition of Ethiopia (Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front), headed by Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, agreed to fully implement the Algiers peace treaty signed with Eritrea in 2000, with peace declared by both parties in July 2018. Ethiopia also announced that it would accept the outcome of the 2002 UN-backed Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) ruling which awarded disputed territories including the town of Badme to Eritrea.
22. Asmara summit 2018 : At a summit in July 2018 in Asmara, Eritrea's President Isaias Afewerki and Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed signed a joint declaration formally ending the state of war.
23.  Despite the warmth of reunions, there was no comment from Eritrea's government on the Nobel Peace Prize, even though the Nobel committee noted its leader's role: "Peace does not arise from the actions of one party alone. When Prime Minister Abiy reached out his hand, President Afwerki grasped it," the Nobel committee said.

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