My review of the Horn of Africa continues…
A particularly toxic legacy of the colonial era is the set of borders it left behind. In the Horn, almost every border is still violently disputed.
Some historical background is in order. Ethiopia was cheated out of access to the port of Massawa by England in 1885. England had asked for Ethiopia’s help in evacuating stranded soldiers in the interior before they were massacred by the Mahdi, the Osama bin Laden fundamentalist of his time (played by Lawrence Olivier in the 1966 film “Khartoum”). Landlocked Ethiopia’s reward was to be free access to the port of Massawa, and, it hoped, maybe even control. Ethiopia did its job: the only British-led troops who survived the Mahdi’s army were those rescued by Ethiopia’s Emperor Yohannes. In Khartoum, General “Chinese” Gordon (Charlton Heston) and the rest were slaughtered.
But Italy, not Ethiopia, got Massawa. England wanted a friendly European power to occupy the port to keep it out of the hands of its main rival, France. England and France both needed a fueling station between Europe and their Asian colonies now that the Suez Canal was open. England already had its port at Aden.
France then established a port at Djibouti, at the mouth of the Red Sea. In 1890, Italy founded and called its colony ‘Eritrea’, a newly invented name. Wanting more territory, Italy pushed southward into Ethiopia until, in 1896, Ethiopia resisted. To the shock of the world and the humilation of Italy, an African army defeated a European power at Adwa! Emperor Menelik then went home, unable to sustain his huge army in the field. Italy kept Eritrea. Over the next decades Italian cartographers drew new maps that naturally served Italian purposes.
When Fascist Italy took over Ethiopia in 1936, the border with Eritrea became internal and purely administrative. After World War II, the fate of Italy’s Horn colonies was up for grabs. Ethiopia wanted Eritrea back, but some Eritreans preferred independence. The compromise was to give Eritrea a large measure of home rule, but within Ethiopia. As the provisions of home rule were slowly eliminated and replaced by annexation, an Eritrean independence movement arose, which persevered for thirty years. In 1993, Eritrea formally became an independent state. The internal provincial border between Eritrea and Ethiopia once again became an international boundary, but one that had never been clearly demarcated. The Italians had fudged the border and Ethiopia lacked the capacity before World War II to call them on it.
In 1998, Eritrea attacked the Ethiopian-administered small border town of Badme, which it claimed was properly in Eritrea. Ethiopia counterattacked and two years later, after horrifying battles in which thousands of soldiers charged across open fields into machine gun fire, tank duels, massive artillery exchanges, of dogfights between modern jets, at least 70,000 were dead in battle.
The yellow band, entirely within Eritrea, marks the 25-km-wideTemporary Security Zone monitored by the UN
A ceasefire agreement in 2000 gave the problem to a Border Commission to be convened in The Hague. Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to abide by the border it would define, using maps dating back to the last time the border had meaning, i.e. the colonial period. When the results were made public in 2003, Badme was found to be in Eritrea. Ethiopia rejected the decision, despite its commitment to abide by the Hague’s decision. The guarantors of the ceasefire agreement - the UN, US, EU and African Union - did nothing.
UN Peacekeepers monitored the 600-mile border until they were ejected in 2008 by President Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea’s still infuriated president. Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, still hiding behind the passivity of the international guarantors, makes periodic empty statements about being ready to discuss practical adjustments to a map drawn thousands of miles away and never validated on the ground.
Today, hundreds of thousands of troops still face each other, often within sight and sniping distance. Neither side can afford war but neither leader can afford to back down. Eritrea says it is willing to discuss problems with the border, but only after formal demarcation on the ground. Ethiopia says discussions must come first.
And so things remain. Next time…the other bad borders in the Horn.
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Schlomo: Just a brief comment on your excellent blog on the Eritrea/Ethiopia border.
I was Country Officer at the State Department for Eritrea and Ethiopia on the day they went to war (to the State Dept’s complete surprize). I consulted with the Office of the Geographer at State as we tried to figure out what was going on. There WERE treaties to define the border signed by Italy AND Ethiopia in the early years of the 20th century. You will notice that there is one straight line on the border that runs in a southwest to northeast direction on the western part of the map. Badume sits on that line. The northern tip of that line is defined by treaty as the confulence of two small rivers. The southern point is also defined by the confulence of two (different) rivers. What happened over nearly a hundred years is that the four fast-moving rivers moved, moving the border with them A redefinition of the border was needed; and that should have been accomplished by negotiations, perhaps with the help of the UN and the International courts in the Hague. The State Dept. and several returned PCVs did everything we could to see to it that those meetings took place; but we failed and nearly 100,000 people died.
Very sad.
Thanks for these good comments. I have read differing accounts about the border negotiations between Ethiopia and Italy after Adwa. I may be mistaken about Ethiopia not having accepted those early borders.
Still, it seems likely to me that the two sides were far from equal in cartographic skills, and the maps under discussion were probably drawn by Italians. Was there joint validation of the maps on the ground in 1902 and 1908, even before streams shifted course, and perhaps some villages relocated? The straight line you refer to on the map is a familiar kind of colonial map-making, done from a distance and ignoring history, ethnic distribution, geography and human settlement. Italy’s lust for more Ethiopian territory, and its behavior on the Ethiopia-Italian Somaliand border, suggest that trickery with maps and border demarcation would have been in character along Ethiopia-Eritrea border also.
Unfortunately, there was no ground validation of the map drawn up by the Border Commission in The Hague before it was officially published. I have read that on-site validation of a the draft map was planned, but was canceled after 9/11. Is there a reader who has more information about this?
It is not uncommon to draw international borders based on projections from one latitude intersecton with a longitude to another, e.g. most of the US - Canadian border.
It’s true that many borders are drawn with a ruler on a map — a blunt instrument. It works best if no one is living in the border area and other factors are unknown or overlooked (e.g. is there oil underground?) And it’s usually done by outsiders whose goals are different from those of the local residents. In the case of the US/Canada border, no one consulted the Native Americans. It didn’t matter anyway, since they were soon chased off most of their land on both sides of the border.
But in a region like the heart of the old Empire of Axum that has been settled for more than 2000 years, with a complex history and a variety of ethnic and religious traditions, this kind of map-making is an exersize of power power, not a sensible way to draw lasting borders.
Rulers or no, African countries agreed not to attempt to redraw borders remaining from colonial days. They know that doing this will insite violence and they have been proven correct in this understanding.
It was a wise policy to accept the borders left behind by colonialism, however unrelated they were to local historical reality. It undoubtedly prevented a lot of bloodshed.
If strictly applied, however, it would present an ambiguous situation for Eritrean independence. When that policy was accepted during the formation of the Organization of African Unity, Eritrea was part of Ethiopia, as it had been before the Italians arrived. There was no border conflict because it was just a provincial, not an international, border. There was no ethnic difference between the populations on either side of the border, regardless precisely where that border was located.
But was Eritrea’s independence a violation of that principle?
The situation was unique. Ethiopia, unlike the rest of Africa, was a soverign nation at the time the colonial era began and suffered the loss of territory to an invading power. Why should this case be compared with European mapmaking in areas where there was no prior sovereignty? Should a broad principle apply in every situation, even when the circumstances are different?
I doubt that there was a good alternative to Eritrean independence when the Derg fell, but that’s a judgment based on the specific case, not the rigid application of a principle. It isn’t clear, as a matter of fact, whether the OAU principle was applied correctly, or whether it didn’t apply in the first place because the circumstances were so different.
Many African countries were still under colonial rule when the OAU adopted the border freeze. What consitutes colonial rule? Mozambique and Angola were not really ruled by Portugal. The colonial power held some port cities and left the hinterland to whoever, held sway.
I have strong comments about this blog entry. First of all, Eritrea is not a new name per se. It is rather a translation of the Greek Ερυθραία (Erythraía, meaning Red [a reference to the Red Sea]).
Secondly, the peoples that are now Eritreans and their land were never under the direct political control of what is now called Ethiopia, rather they were subjected to periodic raids by those who claimed to be “governors” (these were appointed by the Ethiopian emperors, but rarely recognized).
Thirdly, as to the conflict, it is simply a question of international law. As the treaties were accepted by both Ethiopia and Italy, the borders carry over. As the border are defined by the rivers, the border move with the rivers. Regardless, the Agreement signed by Eritrea and Ethiopia at the end of the war require automatic acceptance of the border determined by the EEBC based strictly on the treaties signed. Ethiopia continues to violate this agreement.
Fourthly, Eritrea was not voluntarily federated with Ethiopia (note the comments of John Foster Dulles on the matter), rather it was forced into what was supposed to be a temporary Federation at which time it would choose its destiny. The Ethiopians abrogated this treaty and Eritreans were forced to fight for it. Eritreans viewed the Ethiopians as a colonial force and thus, ironically it should have been the OAU’s Liberation Committee who should have come to its aid.
I hope this has been helpful to blogger and readers alike (if there is anything you would like to contest I would be happy to provide sources)!
merhawie
Did Eritreans fight on the Italian or Ethiopian side in the Battle of Adua?
‘Eritrea’ is, as you say, an old name that referred only to the Red Sea. The highlands and the coast that are within today’s Eritrea were part of the empire of Axum, and were never known by the name. Today’s Eritrea has kept the name that Italy gave its colony in the late 19th century.
During the first millennium, Axum ruled much the territory that is now Eritrea. Your statement that it was ‘never under the control of Ethiopia’ only applies to remote parts of today’s Eritrea that may never have been ruled by either Axum or Ethiopia (in later centuries). Ethiopia’s empire expanded and contracted over the years, at times including parts of today’s Eritrea, at other times not.
As you say, Ethiopia is in clear violation of its own written commitment to accept the ruling of the EEBC (the Boundary Commission in The Hague). Some of Ethiopia’s objections to the border decision may or may not have merit. No one knows, because there has never been a ground inspection of the border to validate the maps drawn in The Hague. This does not alter the fact that Ethiopia agreed to accept the EEBC decision and has refused to do so since 2002. By the way, your claim that borders move when rivers change course is surprising. Can you document it?
There were many in Eritrea who favored independence after World War II, though there were also others who did not. The ‘big countries’ also disagreed about what to do. The result was a federation in 1952 that pleased no one. Was it intended to be a temporary arrangement? Ethiopia obviously thought so, because it soon eliminated the features that were intended to give Eritrea home rule. You suggest a different kind of temporary condition, one that was to lead to a referendum, or the equivalent, on independence Can you document this? In any case, Ethiopia’s actions inspired the liberation movement that eventually led to Eritrea’s official independence in 1993.
Shlomo,
I began writing a response however, I quickly realized that the scope of inquiry was so great that it would not be possible for me to effectively and/or efficiently use the space provided in this comment box to reply. To that end I went ahead and wrote a response on my blog. The response can be found here: http://blog.merhawie.com/2009/06/12/questions-of-eritrean-history
@Leo
Both.