formerly occupied by Italian imperialists as early as the late 1800s (as something of a concession, for they failed to take Ethiopia until much later), later became a Cold War tug-o-war game along with Somalia where nobody really gained but the dictators propped up by Soviet and American imperialisms. It would not be a stretch to say that these Cold War "games" are responsible for many of the problems that exist now.
As for now, Eritrea has about 3mil people I believe, not too long ago fought and won its independence from Ethiopia ('93 if memory serves). At one point the free government organized into what it referred to as a sort of mixed/socialist economy, by now they're probably packaging themselves into the sort of fake image and empty rhetoric that appeals to neoliberal economists that run the world now. It seems that sometime in the last couple years the government turned more authoritarian, shut down opposition papers and threw several hundred dissidents in jail. Sounds like just the sort of regime that Washington politicians would want to get in bed with.
There was still fighting in the late 90s/2000s, trench warfare and border fighting/etc and a major Ethiopian invasion, by some accounts up to half a million troops involved in all at a point. That's quite an accomplishment for a region starving because of draughts. Between a quarter million and a million were turned into IDPs/refugees by the 90s/2000s war. Many thousands of refugees/IDPs were created by the wars.
from one of the links below,
From 1976 onwards the Ethiopian military regime, known as the Derg, led by Mengistu Haile-Mariam, ruled by brutally suppressing the population. It was involved in a series of civil wars against separatist movements of Eritreans and Tigrayans, as well as the Oromos and Somalis. Soviet backing was never extended beyond military aid, and the country became even poorer than under Haile Selassie, plagued by drought and the famine of 1984 and 1985, in which hundreds of thousands perished.With the collapse of the USSR, the nationalist movements—the Eritrean Peoples Liberation Front (EPLF) and the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Front (TPLF)—were able to defeat the Ethiopian regime of Mengistu. The TPLF, based in the northern part of Ethiopia next to Eritrea, eventually brought together other movements opposing Mengistu and established the present Ethiopian government under Meles Zenawi.The popular revolutionary uprising which overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974 united working people, intellectuals and peasants against the regime and its US backers and was politically amorphous. Nationalism only came to dominate the political opposition after the military regime, which had immediately begun jailing and executing all opponents, was courted by the Moscow Stalinists and received their military backing. Even then both the EPLF and the TPLF employed socialist phraseology borrowed from Maoism to embellish their nationalist agenda. Since taking power both movements have abandoned their verbal allegiance to socialism, supporting free market economics and vying for support from Western governments.a few links about the war and general news/history/facts from a variety of sources,
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/may2000/eth-m25.shtmlhttp://www.wsws.org/sections/category/news/af-ethio.shtmlhttp://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/er.htmlhttp://allafrica.com/eritrea/http://www.flash.net/~comvoice/25cEritrea.htmlhttp://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/Ethiopia/16239
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
