Both Sides in Africa’s Longest War Look for Peaceful Solution in Atlanta

SANTA CRUZ —  In what must be one of the more unlikely locales for such a meeting, representatives of the Ethiopian government and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) will come to America’s Deep South this week to begin preliminary negotiations toward the settlement of Africa’s longest war.

This has been a 28-year struggle. The Eritreans seek independence for their former Italian colony on the Red Sea coast; the Ethiopian government, among many considerations, is intent on preserving its access to the sea. Conflict has exacerbated the effects of recurrentfamines in northern Ethiopia and produced an estimated 700,000 Eritrean refugees and killed half a million people since 1961.

Until this summer, all attempts to bring the two sides into direct negotiations had failed because of their intransigent positions. The negotiations starting Thursday in Atlanta are the result of a drastically altered military situation in Eritrea and the tireless shuttle diplomacy of former President Jimmy Carter, whose International Negotiation Network, based in the Carter Center at Emory University, will provide the forum for the first round of peace negotiations.

Starting last January, Carter talked repeatedly with Ethiopia’s President Mengistu Haile Mariam and Isseyas Aferworki, general secretary of the EPLF. Aferworki, visiting the United States in May, stressed the EPLF’s desire to seek a political settlement overseen by a third party. Carter returned to Ethiopia in late July and obtained Mengistu’s approval for the Atlanta negotiations.

“The parties cannot win through continued war, but both sides can win a negotiated settlement,” the former President said.

For several years the EPLF has sought a negotiated settlement to the war through an internationally supervised referendum on Eritrea’s political future. One model they cite is a Zimbabwe plebiscite, organized in large part by the Carter Administration during the late 1970s. But until this summer, Mengistu was unwilling to negotiate publicly with the rebel organization. He has been shoved to the bargaining table by a series of events that began in March, 1988, when the EPLF destroyed a third of the Ethiopian army in Eritrea at the battle of Afabet, capturing massive quantities of Soviet-supplied weaponry and forcing the Ethiopians to abandon the western half of Eritrea.

The debacle at Afabet was followed by further Ethiopian defeats in Eritrea and neighboring Tigre province, where the Tigre People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) by this March had driven Mengistu’s armies from the entire province, including the crucial Soviet-built air base at Mekeller. These military disasters produced a coup attempt against Mengistu in mid-May, organized by the commanding generals of the Ethiopian army.

Though the coup was foiled after heavy fighting in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, the attempt demonstrated the army’s disillusionment with Mengistu’s policy of “Everything to the War Front.” In their radio broadcasts, coup leaders called for a “peace dialogue” toward a negotiated settlement of the war. Then, in the aftermath of the coup, the call for negotiations was taken up by the Ethiopian Shengo--the national Parliament that in the past served as a rubber stamp for Mengistu’s decisions.

The Shengo call for unconditional talks, accepting the EPLF demand for public negotiations, reflected Mengistu’s weak position following the failed coup. That action decimated the Ethiopian officer corps--more than 200 high-ranking officers were arrested and eight leading generals executed. Perhaps the crucial point is that Mengistu has been subjected to mounting pressure from the Soviet Union to negotiate with the EPLF.

Since 1978 the Soviets, with their Cuban and East German allies, have been the principal supplier of arms and military advisers to the Ethiopians. In return, they were allowed to build a naval base in Eritrea’s Dahlak archipelago. Today, however, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev leads a reappraisal of Soviet military commitments around the world, the level of support demanded by Mengistu has begun to look increasingly like an anachronism from the discredited Brezhnev era--particularly in view of the disastrous failures of Mengistu’s military and economic programs during the last two years.

During Mengistu’s visit to Moscow in July, 1988, Gorbachev reportedly told the Ethiopian leader that “our unqualified military and economic commitment cannot continue much further.” As settlements to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Angola have moved forward during the past year, Mengistu’s intransigent attitude placed him increasingly at odds with Gorbachev’s foreign policy.

Nonetheless, the Soviets did resupply the Ethiopian army with the large quantities of heavy weapons lost at Afabet, and the EPLF reports that in recent months the Ethiopians have received new shipments. Soviet arms supply both sides in the Eritrean war, for the EPLF relies almost entirely on captured Ethiopian weapons. The Soviets are consequently in a position to apply a great deal of pressure on both sides to negotiate a political settlement but--perhaps because of their involvement--they have been unable or unwilling to arrange peace negotiations themselves. An invisible Soviet hand must, however, be recognized in the success of Carter’s shuttle diplomacy.

It is ironic that Jimmy Carter should bring the warring sides to the negotiating table, for it was Carter who decided to cut U.S. military aid to Mengistu following the Ethiopian revolution. That decision paved the way for Soviet intervention in support of Mengistu’s avowedly Marxist government during 1978. The Eritreans argue that had it not been for this Soviet intervention, they might have established an independent government in Eritrea during 1978, because the withdrawal of U.S. military aid--provided largely as “rent” for the use of a military communications base in the Eritrean capital--left the Ethiopian army powerless to stop the Eritrean guerrillas’ advance.

The true situation, however, was far more complicated. During the 1970s the Eritreans were divided into a number of rival political organizations, each with its own guerrilla army. Their disunity left them isolated internationally and weakened militarily. Only in the early 1980s, after a bitter civil war fought simultaneously with a series of massive Ethiopian offensives, was the EPLF able to drive its rivals into the Sudan and assume complete leadership of the independence struggle inside Eritrea.

In the West, and particularly in the United States, Ethiopia is no longer regarded merely as another domino in an overarching East-West conflict. Now Ethiopia is viewed as the scene of an immense human tragedy, exacerbated by the continuation of the Eritrean war. The stage is thus set for a possible solution to the conflict and, with it, a possible end to the cyclic war-famine in northern Ethiopia.

But while the superpowers may hope for a peaceful resolution, specific regional considerations that have fueled this bitter war for almost three decades still remain. For example, if Eritrea were to become independent, how would Ethiopia be guaranteed access to the sea? In particular, what would be the status of Assab--Addis Ababa’s main port, the site of Ethiopia’s only oil refinery and a city separated from the rest of Eritrea by 200 miles of the hottest desert in the world? And if Eritrea were to return to the autonomous status granted by the United Nations in 1952, what would guarantee that it would not once again be annexed by the far larger Ethiopian state, as happened in 1962?

With so much blood spilled between them, will the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders finally be able to face the compromises necessary to settle their conflict? So many questions. Perhaps some answers will emerge this week in Atlanta. One thing is certain: The people of Eritrea and Ethiopia desperately need and desire peace.