Current Analysis Ethiopia-Eritrea Peace Process Creeps Forward Two months after Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a pact to end their two-year border war, an agreement to move ahead with its implementation has finally been ironed out. The 4,000 UN troops brought here to monitor the truce are preparing for deployment to the contested frontier. Meanwhile, hundreds of t Dan Connell • 4 min read
MER Article The Importance of Self-Reliance Shortly before Eritrea's declaration of independence from Ethiopia in May 1993, members of the Eritrean security forces arrived on the doorstep of the Regional Center for Human Rights and Development (RCHRD) in downtown Asmara, the capital. The center's director knew precisely why they had come -- t Dan Connell • 16 min read
MER Article Shootout in the Horn of Africa A second round of fighting between Eritrea and Ethiopia in February found the political positions of the former allies little changed from their opening salvos the previous June, but overwhelming Ethiopian numbers -- troops and arms -- finally forced the Eritreans to accept an American-backed “peace Dan Connell • 6 min read
MER Article From Alliance to the Brink of All-Out War In the arid, mountainous, north-eastern corner of Africa, two of the world&’s poorest but best armed states -- Eritrea and Ethiopia, allies until a short while ago -- are on the brink of all-out war. Shuttle diplomacy by a succession of would-be mediators has failed to provide an exit from potential Dan Connell • 9 min read
MER Article Against All Odds Dan Connell, Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution (Red Sea, 1994). Basil Davidson • 3 min read
Sovereignty and Intervention After the Cold War Over the past several years, the perception has become widespread that the world has entered a period of profound change. A main feature of this change has been some erosion of the principle of state sovereignty as a major structural feature of international relations. The new activism of the United John Prendergast, Mark Duffield • 16 min read
MER Article The Famine This Time Gayle Smith coordinates the Africa program at the Washington-based Development Group for Alternative Policies. In the past ten years she has worked extensively in the Horn of Africa on relief and development issues. Her most recent trip to Ethiopia and Sudan was in June 1990. She spoke with Joe Stor Gayle Smith • 7 min read
MER Article Two Books on Eritrea I.M. Lewis, ed., Nationalism and Self-Determination in the Horn of Africa, (London: Ithaca Press, 1983). James Firebrace with Stuart Holland, Never Kneel Down: Drought, Development and Liberation in Eritrea, (Trenton, NJ: Red Sea Press, 1985). Lynne Barbee • 2 min read
MER Article Dispatches: The War in Eritrea February 27, 1982 On February 16 the Ethiopian armed forces launched Operation Red Star, a military offensive aimed at isolating the Eritrean opposition and rebuilding the war-torn territory. Ethiopian troops in Eritrea number 120,000, and they are backed by MiG 23 jet fighters, MI-24 helicopter gu Gayle Smith • 4 min read
MER Article Ethiopia's Revolution from Above With hindsight it is possible to see in the course of the Ethiopian revolution a process of radicalization and post-revolutionary consolidation through which the Provisional Military Administration Committee (PMAC, or the Derg) established a stable new order on the ruins of the old. The direction of Maxine Molyneux, Fred Halliday • 32 min read
MER Article War Crisis Escalates Political developments in Africa have lately slipped out of the headlines, but the confrontations brewing there could dwarf earlier conflicts in both military fury and political complexity. The US-backed regimes in Somalia and Sudan each face the possibility of sudden coups d’etat or civil wars. The Dan Connell • 6 min read
MER Article Letter from the Horn Khartoum, May 1980: Hundreds of Eritreans, Ethiopians and Somalis were rounded up and put in prison in nearby Omdurman when Ethiopian leader Menguistu Hailemariam visited here May 25 to help celebrate the eleventh anniversary of Sudanese President Jaafar al-Numayri’s seizure of power. The purpose of Lynne Barbee • 7 min read
