December 12, 2000 – Ethiopian-Eritrean War: Ethiopia and Eritrea sign a peace agreement
On December 12, 2000,under the auspices of the Algerian government, Ethiopia and Eritrea officiallyended the war with the Algiers Agreement, whose important stipulations includedan exchange of war prisoners, return of displaced persons to their homes andlands, and formation of a Boundary Commission to study and demarcate a commonborder, and a Claims Commission to assess war damages and decide on liabilitiesand reparations. Pursuant to the AlgiersAgreement, the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) was formed in collaborationwith the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA, based in The Hague,Netherlands), tasked to “delimit and demarcate the colonial treaty border basedon pertinent colonial treaties (1900, 1902, and 1908) and applicableinternational law”. Both Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to abide by theEEBC/PCA ruling which was to be “final and binding”.
(Taken from Ethiopian-Eritrean War – Wars of the 20th Century – Vol. 4)
In September 1952, the UNmerged Eritrea with Ethiopia as the Ethiopian-Eritrean Federation,which granted Eritreabroad political autonomy under Ethiopian sovereignty. Pro-independence sentiments among Eritreanswere strong, however, and when the Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, graduallytook away Eritrea’s autonomy, a process that led in November 1962 to thedissolution of the federation and Ethiopia’s outright annexation of Eritrea asa province, Eritreans rose up in rebellion and launched what ultimately turnedinto a thirty-year struggle for independence (previous article).
In the midst of Eritrea’sindependence war, in 1974, Emperor Haile Selassie was deposed in a militarycoup and a council of army officers called “Derg” came to power. The Derg regime experienced great politicalupheavals initially arising from internal power struggles, as well as theEritrean insurgency and other ethnic-based armed rebellions; in 1977-78, theDerg also was involved in a war with neighboring Somalia (the Ogaden War, separate article).
By the early 1990s, theEthiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), a coalition of Ethiopianrebel groups, had formed a military alliance with the EPLF and separatelyaccelerated their insurgencies against the Derg regime. In May 1991, the EPRDF toppled the Derg regime,while the EPLF seized control of Eritrea by defeating and expellingEthiopian government forces. Both theEPRDF and EPLF then gained power in Ethiopiaand Eritrea,respectively, with these rebel movements transitioning into politicalparties. Under a UN-facilitated processand with the Ethiopian government’s approval, Eritreaofficially seceded from Ethiopiaand, following a referendum where nearly 100% of Eritreans voted forindependence, achieved statehood as a fully sovereign state.
Because of their war-timemilitary alliance, the governments of Ethiopia and Eritrea maintained a closerelationship and signed an Agreement of Friendship of Cooperation thatenvisioned a comprehensive package of mutually beneficial political, economic,and social joint endeavors; subsequent treaties were made in the hope ofintegrating the two countries in a broad range of other fields.
Both states nominallywere democracies but with strong authoritarian leaders, Prime Minister MelesZenawi in Ethiopiaand President Isaias Afwerki in Eritrea. State and politicalstructures differed, however, with Ethiopiaestablishing an ethnic-based multi-party federal parliamentary system and Eritreasetting up a staunchly nationalistic, one-party unitary system. Eritreaalso maintained a strong militaristic culture, acquired from its longindependence struggle, for which in the years after gaining independence, itcame into conflict with its neighbors, i.e. Yemen,Djibouti, and Sudan.
Ethiopian-Eritreanrelations soon also deteriorated as a result of political differences, as wellas the personal rivalry between the two countries’ leaders. Furthermore, during their revolutionarystruggles, the Eritrean and Ethiopian rebel groups sometimes came into directconflict over projecting power and controlling territory, which was overcomeonly by their mutual need to defeat a common enemy. In the post-war period, this acrimonioushistorical past now took on greater significance. Relations turned for the worse when inNovember 1997, Eritreaintroduced its own currency, the “nakfa” (which replaced the Ethiopian birr),in order to steer its own independent local and foreign economic and tradepolicies. During the post-war period,trade between Ethiopia and Eritrea was significant, and Eritrea gave special privileges to the nowlandlocked Ethiopia to usethe port of Assab for Ethiopian maritime trade. But with Eritreaintroducing its own currency, Ethiopiabanned the use of the nakfa in all but the smallest transactions, causing tradebetween the two states to plummet. Trucks carrying goods soon were backed up at the border crossings andthe two sides now saw the need to delineate the as yet unmarked border tocontrol cross-border trade.
Meanwhile, disputes inthe frontier region in and around the town of Badme had experienced a steady increase. As early as 1992, Eritrean regional officialscomplained that Ethiopian armed bands descended on Eritrean villages, andexpelled Eritrean residents and destroyed their homes. In July 1994, regional Ethiopian and Eritreanrepresentatives met to discuss the matter, but harassments, expulsions, andarrests of Eritreans continued to be reported in 1994-1996. Then in April 1994, the Eritrean governmentbecame aware that Ethiopiahad carried out a number of demarcations along the Badme area, prompting anexchange of letters by Prime Minister Zenawi and President Afwerki. In November 1994, a joint panel was set up bythe two sides to try and resolve the matter; however, this effort made nosubstantial progress. In the midst ofthe Badme affair, another crisis broke out inJuly-August 1997 where Ethiopian troops entered another undemarcated frontierarea in pursuit of the insurgent group ARDUF (AfarRevolutionary Democratic Unity Front or AfarRevolutionary Democratic Union Front);then when Ethiopia set up a local administration in the area, Eritreaprotested, leading to firefights between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces.
Another source offriction between the two countries was generated when, starting in 1993, theregional administration in Tigray Province (in northern Ethiopia) published“administrative and fiscal” maps of Tigray that included the Badme area and anumber of Eritrean villages that lay beyond the 1902 colonial-era and de facto “border” line. Since the 1950s, Tigray had administered thisarea and had established settlements there. In turn, Eritreadeclared that the area had been encroached as it formed part of the EritreanGash-Barka region.
Badme, a 160-square milearea that became the trigger for the coming war, was located in the wider Badmeplains, the latter forming a section of the vast semi-desert lowlands adjoiningthe Ethiopian mountains and stretching west to the Sudan. During the early 20th century whenthe Ethiopian-Italian border treaties were made, Badme was virtuallyuninhabited, save for the local endemic Kunama tribal people. The 1902 treaty, which became the de facto border between the EthiopianEmpire and Italian Eritrea in the western and central regions, stipulated thatthe border, heading from west to east, ran starting from Khor Um Hagger in theSudanese border, followed the Tekezze (Setit) River to its confluence with theMaieteb River, at which point it ran a straight line north to where the MarebRiver converges with the Ambessa River (Figure 32). Thereafter, the border followed a generaleastward direction along the Mareb, through the smaller MelessaRiver, and finally along the Muna River. In turn, the 1908 treaty specified that theborder along the eastern regions would follow the outlines of the Red Sea coastline from a distance of 60 kilometersinland. These treaties have since beenupheld by successive Ethiopian governments, whose maps have followed thetreaties’ delineations to form a border that is otherwise unmarked on theground.
