Extracted PDF page text

c2eritre[1].pdf

Machine-extracted derivative; not a transcript or translation. Reading order, spacing and characters have not been editorially verified. PDF page numbers are file positions, not printed page labels. No OCR has been added.

Open unchanged original PDF · Download unchanged PDF

Extraction status: extracted-unverified.

 
 
 
 39 
 
2. SCORCHED EARTH IN ERITREA, 1961-77 
 
Background to the Conflict in Eritrea 
 
 The political background to the war in Eritrea has been studied many times by scholars 
of different leanings.  Before conquest by Italian forces in the late 1880s, the history of Eritrea is 
controversial -- scholars dispute whether significant area s of it were tributary to states in 
Ethiopia proper, or not. 
 For half a century Eritrea was an Italian colony, until occupation by the British army 
during the Second World War.  There then followed a decade of political turmoil, as the post-
war powers dithered about the future of the territory, and the Eritreans organized themselves 
into a welter of political parties which campaigned for nationalist, sectarian or unionist causes 
using fair means and foul.  For the most part, the highland Christian population was sympathetic 
to union with Ethiopia, whereas the lowland Moslem population wanted independence.  Some 
of the lowland peoples, notably the Beni Amer tribe which straddles the Sudanese border, were 
influenced by the growing nationalist movement in British-controlled Sudan.  After several false 
starts in trying to determine Eritrea's future, the All ied powers turned the issue over to the 
United Nations, which appointed a Commission of Inquiry to i nvestigate the wishes of the 
Eritrean people. 
 When the UN Commission of Inquiry made its investigation, there was widespread rural 
unrest, which made it impossible to visit many lowland areas in western Eritrea.  The investiga-
tion was also cursory in the extreme, and no referendum wa s held.  Meanwhile, an Eritrean 
assembly was elected, by indirect voting, and was approximately evenly-divided on the crucial 
issue of independence or unity with Ethiopia.  The Ethiopian "liaison office" headed by Colonel 
Negga Haile Selassie financed the pro-Ethiopian Unionist Party, mobilized the Orthodox church 
on his side, and intimidated the opposition.  These tactic s served to alienate much of Eritrea's 
elite. 
 Finally, US strategic interests proved the decisive fact or.  The US was a close ally of 
Haile Selassie, and wanted the use of the strategically-sited air force and communications base 
at Kagnew, in Asmara.  In 1952, Eritrea was given a const itution which included a 
democratically-elected assembly and the key institutions of civil society, but federated under
 the 
Ethiopian crown. 
 Haile Selassie reportedly neither understood nor approved of the notion of federation,1 
                    
 
     1 John D. Spencer, Ethiopia at Bay: A Personal Account of the Haile Selassie Years, Algonai, Mich., 1984. 

 
 
 
 40 
and at once set to work annexing the territory.  The Eritrean administration was stripped of its 
powers and the Assembly was undermined.  The Emperor dismi ssed and appointed Eritrean 
ministers.  A strike by the Eritrean labor unions in 1958 wa s met with violence -- over 200 
strikers were detained and 60 injured by soldiers.  Finally, in 1962, coerced and bribed, and with 
the building surrounded by soldiers, the Assembly members voted to dissolve the Federation. 
 Throughout the 1940s there had been widespread shifta  activity in the lowlands, with up 
to 3,000 bandits active.  This abated after the British offered an amnesty in 1947, but by the mid 
1950s many former shifta returned to violence.   When Haile Selassie's intentions were clear but 
the act of annexation not yet consummated, leading pro-independence Eritreans fled into exile 
and formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) in 1961.  They made contact with shifta leaders, 
and armed revolt began in September of that year.  Most  of the membership of the ELF was 
Moslem, from the western lowlands, and in particular from the Beni Amer. 
 The government deepened Eritrean opposition by continuing to d ismantle Eritrean 
institutions and deprive Eritreans of basic civil and political rights.  There were also a number of 
political detentions and trials, including one of 19 governm ent officials accused of supporting 
the ELF, which was transferred to Addis Ababa in 1963 because the government believed that 
no convictions would be obtained in an Eritrean court.  Ev en those Eritreans who had 
previously been ardent supporters of the Union became disil lusioned.  For example, Tedla 
Bairu, the first Eritrean prime minister, defected to the ELF. 
 
Eritrean Resistance 1961-74 
 
 The first shots in the Eritrean war were fired on Septem ber 1, 1961 in the lowland 
district of Barka.  The leader of the ELF detachment that engaged the Ethiopian soldiers was a 
well-known ex-shifta
 called Idris Awate.  Most of his band of eleven follower s had previous 
military experience in the Sudan Defence Force.2  Over the following few years the political and 
military leaders operated largely in mutual isolation.  Idris Awate was killed in 1962, but the 
ELF continued to grow on the ground, and in the mid 1960s it had over 2,000 fighters. 
 Prominent political leaders of the ELF included Woldeab Woldemariam, Osman Saleh 
Sabbe and Idris Mohamed Adam.  In 1963 a ten-member Supreme Council was established in 
Khartoum.  Finance, armaments and training came at different times from most Arab countries, 
including Syria and Iraq -- under whose Baathist ideology Erit rea was incorporated into the 
Arab world.  In the late 1960s, the ELF received assistance from Cuba and other Marxist states. 
 Sudanese support was important but not unwavering.  While p ublic opinion in 
                     
     2 The British-run colonial army of Sudan. 

 
 
 
 41 
Khartoum and Kassala was strongly pro-ELF, successive Suda nese governments followed 
vacillating policies: support during 1961-4; increasing coolness during 1965 (13 ELF fighters 
were extradited to Ethiopia that year and some were subsequently executed); and coldness from 
1967-9, during which time ELF political activity was prohibited.  During the early radical phase 
of Colonel Jaafar Nimeiri's rule (May 1969-July 1971), Sudanese support for the ELF was again 
strong; it was then cut off in response to an Ethiopian w ithdrawal of support for the Anyanya 
rebels in southern Sudan.  Relations between Sudan and Ethiopia  then deteriorated after the 
1974 revolution, reaching a nadir when the Ethiopian government backed an attempted coup in 
Sudan in July 1976.  In response, the Sudanese government fo llowed policies strongly 
supportive of Eritrean independence -- for two years.  The mos t important role played by the 
Sudan government was allowing the Eritrean fronts to transi t supplies, including military 
equipment, through Port Sudan. 
 In 1965, the ELF reorganized itself into five operational zones along the lines of the 
Algerian Front de Liberation National. 
 The ELF was an amalgam of different elements -- indeed, the zonal structure of 1965 
was adopted partly in order to prevent conflict between diff erent regionally-based elements 
within the organization.  Many substantial conflicts within  the organization were left 
unaddressed.  In the early years, the membership was almost entirely Moslem, and the organiza-
tion had a strong tinge of pan-Arabism.  A position often a dopted was that the liberation of 
Eritrea should precede social or economic transformation.  In the late 1960s there was a growing 
radical element within the ELF, leading to the adoption of Marxist ideas. 
 Much of the insurgent activity in the 1960s and early 1970s inv olved acts of sabotage 
against government installations and bridges, and ambushes o f convoys and trains.  The ELF 
also regularly engaged army patrols, and attacked small garrisons and police posts.  It quickly 
made most of the lowland countryside impassable to government  forces except in military 
convoys. 
 The ELF was anxious to avoid the mistakes of the Palestine Liberation Organization, 
and was reluctant to let people evacuate to Sudan in large numbers.  ELF leaders recognized that 
life in refugee camps would breed a generation of young people bitter and addicted to violence, 
and argued that this would undercut the revolutionary idealism necessary for their membership. 
 The first of a series of splits in the ELF occurred i n 1968.  Osman Saleh Sabbe, a 
prominent exiled leader, departed and founded his own organizati on.  Ibrahim Tewolde (later 
poisoned in suspicious circumstances) and Isseyas Afeworki founded the Tripartite Union.  This 
led eventually to the formation of the EPLF in February 1972, led by Isseyas and Ramadan Nur. 
 The ELF, under the military command of Abdalla Idris, denounced the new organization. 
 There then followed two years of internecine strife be tween the two movements, which 

 
 
 
 42 
caused an estimated 3,000 casualties among the fighters -- more deaths among the combatants 
than the entire thirteen years of government military ac tions to date.  Purges within the two 
fronts also saw a number of people murdered.  A battle betwe en the two fronts at Wolki in 
October 1974 left 600 fighters dead, and caused a spontaneous demonstration by the citizens of 
Asmara, who marched to the battlefield and demanded that the fronts settle their differences by 
negotiation. 
 
Counter-Insurgency 1961-74 
 
 Idris Awate's personal history as a shifta
 leader, the background of the other guerrillas, 
plus twenty years recent experience of intermittent ban ditry in western and southern Eritrea, 
enabled the government to regard the threat as one of strai ghtforward brigandage utilized for 
personal advancement by Moslem sectarians. 
 Throughout the 1960s, the counter-insurgency strategy followed consisted of punitive 
patrols, interspersed with large offensives and a policy of forced relocation in fortified villages.  
This was a colonial-type technique designed to impress t he subjugated population with the 
firepower and determination of the government.  It led dire ctly to large-scale human rights 
abuses. 
 The actions of the army also led to the impoverishment of rural people, food shortages, 
and famine.  The soldiers requisitioned food, destroyed crops, killed animals, prevented trade, 
drove people from their land, and (during 1975) blockaded the entire highlands.  From the very 
start of the war, the Ethiopian army used hunger as a weapon. 
 Starting in September 1961, the day-to-day brutality of a rmy patrols caused many abuses 
of human rights.  Dawit Wolde Giorgis, later head of the RRC, served as a military officer at the 
time.  While fervently pro-unity (i.e. anti-Eritrean independence), he was critical of the army's 
operational methods: 
 The army ... entered Eritrea in the 1960s with the mentality of a conqueror.  It belittled 
the small bands of Moslem separatists operating in the lowla nd areas and believed it 
could command respect and loyalty from the people by sheer show of force.... The army 
made a crucial error in this operation; it did not concentr ate on attacking the guerrillas 
directly; instead it devastated the villages suspected of harboring them. 
 
 Another disastrous decision was that the army would carry  only two or three days' 
rations at a time.  After they ran out, they were expected to live off the land, to take what 
they needed from the people.  I remember soldiers slaughtering cattle, eating what they 
wanted, and then leaving the rest to rot.  Sometimes soldiers would kill cattle just to get 
the livers.  It was as if they were in enemy territory.3 
                    
 
     3 Dawit Wolde Giorgis, Red Tears: War, Famine and Revolution in Ethiopia, Trenton, NJ, 1989, p. 82. 

 
 
 
 43 
 Haggai Erlich, an Israeli scholar, commented that "usua lly in Eritrea a company would 
leave for a month-long routine counter-insurgency operation carrying almost no supplies, which 
almost inevitably turned them into shifta in uniform."4 
 A more effective aspect of the Ethiopian counter-insurgency operation was the training 
of an elite commando force, with Israeli assistance.  Known as Force 101, this unit became 
operational in 1965.   
 
 Scorched Earth: The 1967 Killings 
 
 The first large-scale abuses of human rights occurred d uring three army offensives in 
1967.  The governor of Eritrea, Ras Asrate Kassa is repor ted to have boasted that he would 
leave Eritrea as bare as his bald head.  Certainly, through out the year the army behaved as 
though the depopulation of the Eritrean countryside was its aim. 
 The first offensive began at dawn on February 11, when a force of about 5,000 soldiers 
began burning villages in Barka district.  An Israeli advisor wrote in his diary: 
 The Second Division is very efficient in killing innocent  people.  They are alienating the 
Eritreans and deepening the hatred that already exists.  Their commander took his aides 
to a spot near the Sudanese border and ordered them: "from here to the north -- clear the 
area."  Many innocent people were massacred and nothing of substance was achieved.5 
 Between February and April the army burned 62 villages, i ncluding Mogoraib, Zamla, 
Ad Ibrahim, Gerset Gurgur, Adi Bera, Asir, Fori and Ad Habab, while villagers were ordered to 
collect at army posts for screening.  The soldiers were a ssisted by artillery and aerial 
bombardment using incendiaries.  According to reports from loc al community leaders, 402 
civilians were killed, and about 60,000 cattle and camels slaughtered with machine guns and 
knives and by burning alive.6  In addition, 21 detainees, most of them teachers and government 
employees, were summarily executed in Tessenei prison on February 12.  Traders were singled 
out for detention or killing, because they were believed to be responsible for supplying food to 
the insurgents. 
 Between March and May, 25,500 Eritrean refugees were registered in Sudan, and an 
estimated 5,000 more crossed the border and stayed unregis tered in Beni Amer villages.  The 
Ethiopian government objected to humanitarian assistance, calling them "rebels not refugees."7  
                    
 
     4 Haggai Erlich, The Struggle over Eritrea 1962-1978 : War and Revolution in the Horn of Africa , Stanford, 
1983, p. 39. 
     5 Quoted in: Erlich, 1983, p. 58. 
     6 Mohamed Hamed, The International Dimension of the Battle for Eritrea
, Beirut, 1974, pp. 126-7 (in Arabic). 
     7 Ahmad Karadawi, "Refugee Policy in the Sudan 1967-1984," DPhil Thesis, Oxford, 1988, pp. 57-9. 

 
 
 
 44 
On March 15, the Sudanese village of Guba, close to the border, was attacked by the Ethiopian 
army on the suspicion that ELF fighters were present.  One villager was shot dead and three 
were kidnapped.  A nearby village, Debre Sultan, was also attacked.  Immediately before the 
offensive began, Haile Selassie had visited Sudan to ensur e that the Sudanese government 
would respond appropriately: it duly withdrew the refugees from the border area and prohibited 
the activities of the ELF, but succeeded in obtaining humanit arian assistance from the United 
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and setting up a refugee camp.8  This was 
UNHCR's first involvement in the Horn of Africa, and the first of many refugee flows over the 
following 25 years. 
 After these atrocities, a large area of Barka was left uninhabited. 
 In July 1967, the army turned its attention to the easter n lowlands of Semhar.  The 
villages of Eilet and Gumhot were burned on July 11, and 30 yo ung men were tied up and 
burned alive inside a house.  Five other villages were burned over the following days,9 and 51 
people killed.  6,000 domestic animals were killed; according to reports, the soldiers singled out 
camels for slaughter, because they were vital for transport.10 
 The third offensive started in November 1967.  7,000 sold iers from the Second Division 
began to burn villages in the vicinity of Keren.  Almost all the villages of Senhit -- 174 in all -- 
were destroyed.  Some reliably reported atrocities included: 
* Kuhul and Amadi: the army ordered the people to collect in on e place, where they were 
bombed by air force planes. 
 
* Asmat: the army opened fire on a wedding party, killing an unknown number. 
 
* Melefso: thirty community leaders who met the soldiers  and offered them hospitality 
were killed. 
 The army burned crops, killed or confiscated livestock and  poisoned wells, with the 
clear intention of making the area uninhabitable. 
 After Senhit, the burning of villages spread to the highland districts of Seraye and Akele 
Guzai, which had been hitherto little affected by the war.  86 villages were burned in these two 
districts, and at least 159 people killed. 
 
 Forced Relocation in Fortified Villages 
 
                    
 
     8 Karadawi, 1988, pp. 62-4. 
     9 One of those destroyed was Sheib, the scene of massacres in 1988 and 1989 (see chapter 14). 
     10 Mohamed, 1974, p. 131. 

 
 
 
 45 
 In December 1966, the army began a policy of forcible re location into fortified villages 
among the pastoral population of Barka.  After each of the three 1967 offensives much of the 
population was relocated in new villages or forced to live in nearby towns. 
 In the fortified villages, curfews were imposed, toge ther with restrictions on daytime 
movements.  This had a profound impact on the livelihood of the herders.  In normal times, pas-
toralists leave their village for days or weeks during t he dry season in order to search for 
grazing; if they are confined to a radius of half a day's walk from the village, they can only keep 
a small number of animals on the limited grass and browse of this area.  In addition, because of 
the daytime heat during certain times of year, herders prefer to graze and water animals at night. 
 This is better for the animals' health and means they d rink less water -- water is a scarce and 
expensive commodity in Eritrea.  The policy of curfews made  this night-time grazing 
impossible.  On occasions when the strategic hamlets proved too difficult to maintain, the army 
forcibly relocated the population in nearby urban centers, with even more drastic consequences 
for their livelihoods.  Strict controls on trade were es tablished, with the inspection of all food 
items brought in and out of villages and towns by vehicle or pack animal. 
 However, as the ELF regained control of the countryside, the people began to return to 
their previous homes. 
 
 The 1970-1 Massacres 
 
 In January 1970, the army re-launched the policy of forcible  villagization, coinciding 
with a large military sweep through Barka and Sahel.  Tens of villages were burned.  In March, 
16,700 refugees fled to Sudan, mostly to the Tokar area alo ng the Red Sea coast.  The period 
from April to July witnessed many atrocities as militar y activities spread to the eastern 
lowlands.  32 civilians were shot dead when the army burne d Arafali village.  88 people were 
executed when the people of Atshoma, between Massawa and Ghinda, refused army orders to 
relocate in a protected village. 
 Violence against the civilian population increased towards the end of the year.  In 
retaliation for an ambush in which a senior army commander was killed, there was a series of 
massacres near Keren.  One atrocity was the killing of 11 2 people in a mosque at Basadare in 
November.  The people were collected in the mosque by soldiers who said they would be safe 
there from a planned air strike; the soldiers then opened fire.  Another was the destruction of the 
village of Ona on December 1, in which an estimated 625 pe ople were killed.  This was 
apparently in retaliation for the villagers betraying the presence of an army patrol to the ELF, 
which ambushed it and killed several soldiers. 11  Acting contrary to official orders, local boy 
                    
 
     11 Godfrey Morrison, Eritrea and the Southern Sudan: Aspects of Some Wider African Problems , London, 

 
 
 
 46 
scouts re-entered the village to bury the dead. 
 In December, the military governor imposed a state of emergency on Eritrea, and 
assumed powers of arbitrary arrest, and the right to displac e the population.  Ten-kilometer 
strips of land along the coast and the Sudan border were declared "prohibited zones," where the 
army could open fire on any target.  On January 27, 1971, about 60 civilians, most of them 
elderly people, were killed by soldiers in a mosque in the village of Elabored. 
 As well as being ruthless and violent, the administrat ion was described -- even by those 
sympathetic to its cause -- as "inefficient, brutal and corrupt".12  Senior officers sold the supplies 
destined for their units, and the governors (the civilian Ras Asrate Kassa and the soldier Lt-Gen 
Debebe Haile Mariam) and their associates are alleged to have often detained prominent citizens 
in order to obtain large bribes for their release. 
 
Human Rights Abuses by the Eritrean Fronts 
 
 Both the ELF and EPLF committed abuses against human righ ts during this period.  At 
first, the ELF's Moslem leadership was intolerant of Christians.  Some of the first Christians to 
attempt to join were summarily executed, as were membe rs of a group of university students 
known as Siriyat Addis.  The defection of a large numbe r of Christian fighters in June 1967 
presaged the splits that were to destroy the organizati on in the 1970s.  In 1968, the Tripartite 
Union breakaway group was subject to harassment from partisans of the mainstream ELF based 
in the western lowlands, and two members were arrested and killed. 
 After the army atrocities of 1967, there was a widespr ead demand in the ELF rank and 
file for retributive attacks on civilian targets.  In response, the leadership set up a special unit to 
engage in hijackings of airplanes.  Civilian airplanes were hijacked at Frankfurt in March 1969 
and Karachi in June 1969.  In neither incident were any passengers injured. 
 The ELF also set up a special unit known as "Quattro Cento
," after the death penalty in 
force during the Italian occupation.  Its task was the as sassination of civilians associated with 
the government.  Gwynne Roberts, a journalist who travelled with the ELF in mid-1975, 
estimated that at that time the ELF were carrying out about 15 assassinations each week.  Those 
accused of collaboration were sent two warnings, and if they  ignored both, an assassination 
squad was dispatched.  Roberts also saw numerous civilians who were detained by the ELF for 
having failed to give them assistance, or on suspicion of c ollaborating with the government.13  
                                                                
Minority Rights Group, 1971, p. 29. 
     12 Erlich, 1983, p. 39. 
     13 The Financial Times
, London, October 24, 1975. 

 
 
 
 47 
The Tripartite Union and the EPLF also carried out assas sinations.  On April 14, 1970, two 
judges who had earlier sentenced rebel fighters to death we re shot dead in a bar in Asmara 
together with four other people present. 
 The ELF levied taxes and enacted reprisals against villages and individuals who refused 
to cooperate.  In one of several similar incidents in 1971, 52 Christian villagers were burned to 
death in their huts in a village named Debre Sila for non-payment of ELF demands. 14  On 
March 7, 1971, the ELF plundered the village of Halib Menal, stealing many cattle, after the 
villagers had killed two ELF fighters while resisting an ELF attempt to occupy the village two 
days before.  Individuals who failed to protect ELF prope rty entrusted to them were also 
summarily executed. 
 The organization also repeatedly demanded cash payments from Christian missions in 
its operational areas, and on occasions confiscated medicines from hospitals and pharmacies. 
  There were several instances in which the fronts took Eu ropean and American hostages. 
 For example, on May 24, 1974, the ELF attacked the American Mission Hospital at Ghinda, 
and seized an Eritrean nurse and an American missionary a s hostages.  The nurse was 
summarily killed the same day because she could not keep up with her captors' walking pace; 
the American was released unharmed after three weeks.  In 1975 and 1976, both the ELF and 
EPLF took US servicemen at Kagnew base as hostages; at one point the ELF threatened to try 
two servicemen for the damage and deaths caused by US-suppl ied munitions.  The ELF also 
kidnapped three British tourists, while the EPLF took Mr B . H. Burwood-Taylor, the British 
honorary consul, from his office in central Asmara and ke pt him for five months.  All were 
released unharmed, though Mr Burwood-Taylor was kept in solitary confinement for extended 
periods. 
 
The Eritrean War and the Revolution 
 
 The war in Eritrea was a principal cause of the revoluti on of 1974 which overthrew the 
Emperor Haile Selassie and brought to power the Provisional M ilitary Administrative 
Committee, known by the Amharic word for "committee", the  Dergue.  Senior army officers 
came to believe that the war could not be won by military  means, and that a negotiated 
settlement was needed. 
 Ironically, the revolution followed two years in which there were fewer army offensives, 
and much of the military activity consisted in the war launched by the ELF against the EPLF to 
enforce unity.  The government tried to sow dissension in the Eritrean ranks; attempting to 
                    
 
     14 Africa Contemporary Record, 1971-72, p. B113. 

 
 
 
 48 
inflame the civil war between ELF and EPLF.  Over half of the Ethiopian regular army was 
stationed in Eritrea, a total of 25,000 men.  Regular pat rols continued, together with the 
attempted enforcement of the protected villages strategy, and punitive missions after successful 
ELF or EPLF guerrilla raids. 
 After a spate of assassinations by the rebels in June 1974 -- including the killing of an 
army colonel -- the army burned the village of Om Hager, near the Sudanese border, in July.  
The villagers were ordered to collect in the local stadium.  After waiting for two hours, soldiers 
opened fire with machine guns.  At least 54 civilians were shot dead and a further 73 drowned 
while trying to swim a flooded river.  Some reports indicate that 17 elders were burned to death 
in a hut.  About 4,000 refugees fled to Sudan.  The new milit ary head of state, General Aman 
Andom, himself an Eritrean, apologized for the massacre and promised compensation.  This 
was never paid. 
 General Aman himself was killed in November in a shoot-out with an army unit sent to 
arrest him by Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was e merging as the strongman of the 
Dergue.  Aman had advocated compromise with the Eritrean fronts; Mengistu wanted to settle 
the problem by force of arms.  Starting in 1974, Mengistu made every effort to increase the size 
of the armed forces.  During the years 1974-6, military ass istance from the US was actually 
increased.  However, the amounts provided fell short of Mengistu's ambitions. 
 The intervention of the citizens of Asmara after the ba ttle of Wolki in October 1974 
forced the ELF and the EPLF to try to settle their differences by negotiation.  An agreement was 
reached at Koazien in January 1975 and the two fronts then began  a concerted war on the 
government.  In May 1975, at its second congress, the ELF voted out a number of exiled leaders 
and emphasized unity with the EPLF.  Ahmad Nasir became the new chairman.  The EPLF 
broke with Osman Saleh Sabbe (then head of its foreign mission) and adopted a radical socialist 
program at its first congress in January 1977.  Sabbe then f ounded a third front -- the ELF-
Popular Liberation Forces (ELF-PLF) -- and a series of t riangular negotiations ensued; unity 
was not, however, achieved. 
 Between 1975 and 1977 the fronts succeeded in overrunning almost the entire territory, 
save Asmara, Massawa and the small town of Barentu in the west.  At this time, the fighters of 
the ELF and EPLF outnumbered the Ethiopian forces, and their v ictory appeared to be 
inevitable.  This was the first significant military thre at faced by the new government of the 
Dergue. 
 
 The Siege of Asmara, 1975 
 
 Following Aman's death, the level of violence increased in Eritrea, with the ELF and 

 
 
 
 49 
EPLF closing in on Asmara.  Some guerrillas infiltrated the city on December 22.  In retaliation, 
at least 50 Eritrean youths were killed by security forces, 18 of them strangled with piano wire 
on the night of December 23.  ELF and EPLF commando units attacked installations in the city, 
including civilian targets.  On December 22, a grenade atta ck killed six civilians.  In mid-
January, the US Information Service building and the main pos t office were attacked with 
grenades. 
 On January 31, 1975, the Eritrean fronts launched an attack on Asmara city.  The attack 
started with a rocket attack on an army post, and there w ere a number of battles in nearby 
villages and on the outskirts of the city.  Despite fierc e fighting, the city remained under 
government control. 
 Over the following four days, government soldiers went on the rampage through the 
city.  Civilians were dragged from their houses and executed.  Soldiers opened fire on passing 
cars -- in one incident, six people were killed in a minibus.   Passers by were stopped and shot 
dead.  The soldiers looted and pillaged, in some instances cutting away women's ears to seize 
their earrings.  According to eye-witness reports obtained by journalists who arrived in the city a 
week later, the soldiers used their bayonets when they ra n out of bullets. 15  There are reliable 
reports that exactly 100 civilians were killed at the village of Woki Debra, just outside the city.  
About 50 people were killed at Adi Sogdo. 
 The government claimed that 124 civilians were killed by "stray bullets," during the four 
days of killing, but in a rare admission of a greater degree of responsibility, executed 13 soldiers 
for "excesses" and transferred 90 others in mid February.  Journalists obtained reliable accounts 
of 331 civilian deaths, and other sources claimed that up to 3,000 were killed.  The number of 
combatants killed by on all sides was about 3,000. 
 After the failure of the ELF-EPLF attempt to capture Asmara, the war intensified in the 
countryside as both sides prepared for a prolonged siege.  The EPLF estimated that during 110 
villages were partly or wholly destroyed by the army in 1975.  During February-April there were 
a number of massacres in different parts of Eritrea, wi th tens or hundreds killed on each 
occasion: Harkiko in the eastern lowlands, Adi Worehi Sub, Waulki and Guilla in the west.  In 
one incident at the village of Woki Debah on March 13, a group of soldiers travelling between 
Asmara and Keren rounded up a group of villagers early in  the morning and shot dead 37.  
Some of the survivors fled; others remained behind.  The follow ing day the soldiers returned 
and burned the entire village, reportedly killing 500 people by shooting and stabbing with 
bayonets.  Many livestock were also slaughtered. 
 After a lull, later in the year there were more killings of civilians, usually in reprisals for 
                    
 
     15 Dial Torgerson, The Guardian, London, February 15, 1975. 

 
 
 
 50 
rebel attacks.  Three families were shot dead in Asmara in August.  On August 22, at least six 
boys were killed in Asmara.  A number of villages were destroyed in air attacks. 
 As the ELF and EPLF besieged Asmara, the government used a blockade of food in 
order to try to sap their strength.  Checkpoints around the c ity prevented food from being 
smuggled by sympathizers to the guerrillas.  The import of food from Tigray was also severely 
curtailed, and the Ethiopian Red Cross was prevented from bringing in food relief.  Brig.-Gen. 
Getachew Nadew, the military administrator, explained t he blockade in these terms, made 
familiar by Mao Zedong: "if you wish to kill the fish, fir st you must dry the sea." 16  These 
measures brought considerable hardship to the rebel fighters , who were compelled to rely on 
food brought by camel trains from the Sudan border.  These s upplies were subject to ambush 
and aerial bombardment, and were inadequate.  Journalist Gwynne Roberts described the ELF 
fighters as running short of food, and surviving on reduced diets.17  As some of the villages near 
Asmara ran out of food, ELF units were forced to withdraw.  In and around Asmara, the price of 
food rose more than twenty-fold, to highs surpassing thos e reached in the 1984/5 famine.  
Despite the food crisis -- indeed famine -- the government  maintained its blockade, and 
prevented significant food imports until the military situation had improved. 
 
 The Peasants' March  
 
 1976 and 1977 saw relatively fewer atrocities in Eritre a.  This was related to a number 
of factors, including several rounds of peace negotiati ons and the government's experience in 
1975 that each massacre merely drove people into the arms o f the rebel fronts.  The most 
important reason, however, was that the two main offensives planned into Eritrea failed to reach 
the territory. 
 In 1976, Mengistu planned to overcome the problem of a relative shortage of armaments 
by resorting to a traditional Ethiopian tactic -- a mass levy of peasant soldiers, mobilized with 
the promise of booty and land in the enemy territory.  The soldiers were told that they could take 
any land for themselves, after first driving the Eritreans from it. 
 The "Peasants March" on Eritrea was planned and implement ed starting in March 1976. 
 Major Atnafu Abate, a close friend of Mengistu, was responsible for the march.  About 50,000 
peasants, most of them from Wollo, were recruited.  Some we re volunteers, tempted by the 
government's promises, others were forcibly conscripted.  Most were given antiquated surplus 
rifles from the armory, some were unarmed -- told they would be able to obtain weapons from 
                    
 
     16 Quoted in: Sunday Times, London, September 7, 1975. 
     17 Financial Times, London, October 22, 1975. 

 
 
 
 51 
dead rebels.  Without training, the peasants began to march northwards.  Meanwhile, in 
April the government summarily ordered out all foreigners eng aged in evangelical or 
humanitarian work in Eritrea, closed all mission hospita ls and confiscated most of the 
equipment. 
 Despite intense diplomatic pressure from the US, which objected to this "medieval" 
manner of conducting warfare, the march went ahead.  Howev er, the untrained peasant army 
was no match for the Eritreans -- or indeed the newly-fo rmed Tigrayan People's Liberation 
Front (TPLF).  On the night of June 1/2, a surprise atta ck on the marchers was made at 
Zalenbessa, in Tigray, before they even entered Eritrea, and over 1,200 were killed and the 
remainder dispersed.  Much light weaponry fell into the hands of the TPLF. 
 
 Offensive and Counter-Offensives, 1977  
 
 Atnafu and Mengistu then proceeded with a second plan for a n offensive in Eritrea.  
Atnafu planned to create over 55,000 "Defense of the Revoluti on" squads, containing about 
300,000 militiamen with three months' military training.  (At different times, government 
members spoke of a force numbering between 200,000 and 500,000; prob ably 150,000 were 
actually recruited by mid-1977.)  The militiamen were to march first on rebel forces in Gonder 
and Tigray, and then on Eritrea. 
 Implementation of this plan started in December 1976.  In February 1977, Mengistu 
eliminated senior members of the Dergue who advocated negotiation with the Eritrean fronts, 
including the Dergue chairman, General Teferi Bante.  In April 1977, the first contingents were 
sent to Gonder (see chapter 3).  ELF forces crossed into Gonde r to engage the militia in June, 
but the planned offensive into Eritrea was overtaken by events -- Somalia invaded the Ogaden, 
and the militia were diverted to the southeast. 
 Regular military units remained active in Eritrea, and there were numerous instances of 
violence against civilians, though not on the scale of 1975.  In early March 1977, a naval unit 
killed between 100 and 160 civilians at the Red Sea village of Imberemi.  On March 31, 1977, 
army units reportedly killed 42 civilians in reprisal for actions by the fronts. 
 During 1977, the Eritrean fronts remained on the offensive.  They were able to enter 
Asmara at will -- in June the ELF displayed its confidence by taking a British journalist into the 
city at night.  Starting in March, both fronts began to capt ure provincial towns -- Nacfa in 
March, Tessenei and Afabet in April, Keren and Decamhare i n July, Mendefera in August.  
They appeared poised for an assault on Asmara.  The main factor deterring the attack was a fear 
of renewed conflict between the ELF and EPLF -- the "Angola-ization" of Eritrea. 
 In early 1978, the Ethiopian administration in Eritrea m ade an estimate for the cost of 

 
 
 
 52 
the war over the previous sixteen and a half years.  According to the estimate, 13,000 soldiers 
and between 30,000 and 50,000 civilians had been killed or wounded.  (No figure was given for 
casualties among the ELF and EPLF.)  There were more tha n 200,000 Eritreans forced into 
exile over half of them in Sudan.  The financial cost in t erms of damage to property and the 
expenses of pursuing the war amounted to US$1.2 billion.18 
                     
     18 Quoted in UN Commission on Human Rights, "A Study on Human Rights and Mass Exoduses," by Prince 
Sadruddin Aga Khan, Annex II, 1981, para. 32.