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Ethiopia The Eritrean Movement
Eritrea and the Imperial Regime
Eritrean separatism had its roots in World War II. In 1941,
in the Battle of Keren, the Allies drove Italian forces out
of Eritrea, which had been under Italy's rule since the end
of the nineteenth century. Administration of the region was
then entrusted to the British military until its fate could
be determined by the Allies. Britain, however, sought to
divide Eritrea along religious lines, giving the coast and
highland areas to Ethiopia and the Muslim-inhabited northern
and western lowlands to British-ruled Sudan.
In 1952 the United Nations (UN) tried to satisfy the
demand for self-determination by creating an EritreanEthiopian federation. In 1962, however, Haile Selassie
unilaterally abolished the federation and imposed imperial
rule throughout Eritrea.
Radical opposition to the incorporation of Eritrea into
Ethiopia had begun in 1958 with the founding of the Eritrean
Liberation Movement (ELM), an organization made up mainly of
students, intellectuals, and urban wage laborers. The ELM
engaged in clandestine political activities intended to
cultivate resistance to the centralizing policies of the
imperial state. By 1962, however, the ELM had been
discovered and destroyed by imperial authorities.
Even as the ELM was being neutralized, a new organization
of Eritrean nationalists was forming. In 1960 Eritrean
exiles in Cairo founded the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF).
In contrast to the ELM, from the outset the ELF was bent on
waging armed struggle on behalf of Eritrean independence.
The ELF was composed mainly of Eritrean Muslims from the
rural lowlands on the western edge of the territory. In 1961
the ELF's political character was vague, but radical Arab
states such as Syria and Iraq sympathized with Eritrea as a
predominantly Muslim region struggling to escape oppression
and imperial domination. These two countries therefore
supplied military and financial assistance to the ELF.
The ELF initiated military operations in 1961. These
operations intensified in response to the 1962 dissolution
of the Eritrean-Ethiopian federation. The ELF claimed that
the process by which this act took place violated the
Eritrean federal constitution and denied the Eritrean people
their right to self-determination. By this time, the
movement claimed to be multiethnic, involving individuals
from Eritrea's nine major ethnic groups.
The ELF's first several years of guerrilla activity in
Eritrea were characterized by poor preparation, poor
leadership, and poor military performance. By 1967, however,
the ELF had gained considerable support among peasants,
particularly in Eritrea's north and west, and around the
port city of Mitsiwa. Haile Selassie attempted to calm the
growing unrest by visiting Eritrea and assuring its
inhabitants that they would be treated as equals under the
new arrangements. Although he doled out offices, money, and
titles in early 1967 in hopes of co-opting would-be Eritrean
opponents, the resistance intensified.
From the beginning, a serious problem confronting the ELF
was the development of a base of popular support and a
cohesive military wing. The front divided Eritrea into five
military regions, giving regional commanders considerable
latitude in carrying out the struggle in their respective
zones. Perhaps just as debilitating were internal disputes
over strategy and tactics. These disagreements eventually
led to the ELF's fragmentation and the founding in 1972 of
another group, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front
(EPLF). The leadership of this multiethnic movement came to
be dominated by leftist, Christian intellectuals who spoke
Tigrinya, Eritrea's predominant language. Sporadic armed
conflict ensued between the two groups from 1972 to 1974,
even as they fought the Ethiopian forces. The various
organizations, each waging a separate campaign against the
Haile Selassie regime, had become such a serious threat that
the emperor declared martial law in Eritrea and deployed
half his army to contain the struggle. But the Eritrean
insurgents fiercely resisted. In January 1974, the EPLF
handed Haile Selassie's forces a crushing defeat at Asmera,
severely affecting the army's morale and exposing the
crown's ever-weakening position.
Data as of 1991
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