Eritrea (IPA: /??r----tre??/, /??r----tri??/) (Ge'ez: ???? --Ertr--), officially the State of Eritrea, is a country situated in northern East Africa. It is bordered by Sudan in the west, Ethiopia in the south, and Djibouti in the southeast. The east and northeast of the country have an extensive coastline on the Red Sea, directly across from Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Dahlak Archipelago and several of the Hanish Islands are part of Eritrea.
Eritrea was consolidated into a colony by the Italian government on January 1, 1890.
Upon Italy's losses in World War II, Eritrea was ruled as a United Nations protectorate between 1941 and 1952 administered by the British; the UN flag flew over all official buildings.
Following a UN plebiscite in 1950, a resolution 390 (V) was adopted to have Eritrea enter into a federation with Ethiopia in 1952. Emperor Haile Selassie I, nevertheless annexed Eritrea as Ethiopia's 14th province in 1961 sparking the 30-year war that lasted from 1961 to 1991. Following a UN supervised referendum called UNOVER Eritrea declared- and gained international recognition for its independence in 1993.[4] Eritrea's constitution, adopted in 1997, stipulates that the state is a presidential republic with a unicameral parliamentary democracy. The constitution, however, has not yet been implemented fully due to, according to the government, the prevailing border conflict with Ethiopia which began in May 1998. Outside observers, including Freedom House, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, have described Eritrea as "not free", "repressive", and have accused the government of "carrying out an unremitting attack on democratic institutions and civil society."
Eritrea is a multilingual and multicultural country with two dominant religions (Oriental Orthodox Christianity and Sunni Islam) and nine ethnic groups. The country has no official language, but it has three working languages, Tigrinya, Arabic, and English. Italian is also widely spoken amongst the older generations.
History
Main article: History of Eritrea
The oldest written reference to the territory now known as Eritrea is the chronicled expedition launched to the fabled Punt (or "Ta Netjeru," meaning land of the Gods) by the Ancient Egyptians in the twenty-fifth century BC under Pharaoh Sahure. Later sources from the Pharaoh Hatshepsut in the fifteenth century BC present a more detailed portrayal of an expedition in search of incense. The geographical location of the missions to Punt is described as roughly corresponding to the southern west coast of the Red Sea.
The modern name Eritrea was first employed by the Italian colonialists in the late nineteenth century. It is the Italian form of the Greek name ???--?--?-- (Erythraîa; see also List of traditional Greek place names), which derives from the Greek term for the Red Sea (???--?? --??--------).
Pre-history
One of the oldest hominids, representing a link between Homo erectus and an archaic Homo sapiens, was found in Buya (Eritrean Danakil) in 1995 by Italian scientists. The cranium was dated to over 1 million years old.
Furthermore, the Eritrea n Research Project Team, composed of Eritrean, Canadian, American, Dutch, and French scientists, discovered in 1999 some of the first examples of humans using tools to harvest marine resources at a site near the bay of Zula south of Massawa along the Red Sea coast. The site contained obsidian tools dated to over 125,000 years old, from the paleolithic era.[9] Epipaleolithic or mesolithic remains in the form of cave paintings in central and northern Eritrea attest to the early settlement of hunter-gatherers in this region.
A US paleontologist, William Sanders of the University of Michigan also discovered the missing link between ancient and modern elephants in the form of the fossilized remains of a pig-sized creature in Eritrea. Sanders claims that the dating of the fossil to 27 million years ago also pushes the origins of elephants and mastodons five million years further into the past than previously recorded and asserts that modern elephants originated in Africa, in contrast to mammals such as rhinos that had their origins in Europe and Asia and migrated into Africa. In addition to Sanders, the research team included scientists from the Elephant Research Foundation of Wayne State University in Michigan, USA, University of Asmara in Eritrea; Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA, USA; the Eritrean ministry of mines and energy; Global Resources in Asmara, Eritrea; the Muséum national d'histoire naturelle in Paris; the National Museum of Eritrea; and German Primate Center in Gottingen, Germany.
Early history
The earliest evidence of agriculture, urban settlement and trade in Eritrea was found in the region inhabited by people dating back to 3500 BC in the archaeological sites called the Gash group. Based on the archaeological evidence, there seems to have been a connection between the peoples of the Gash group and the civilizations of the Nile Valley namely Ancient Egypt and Nubia.[10] Ancient Egyptian sources also give references to cities and trading posts along the southwestern Red Sea coast, roughly corresponding to modern day Eritrea, calling this the land of Punt famed for its incense. Expeditions to this very land were launched by the Ancient Egyptians as early as the 25th century BC and were chronicled in more detail in later expeditions during the reign of the female Pharaoh Hatshepsut in the 15th century BC.
In the highlands, in one of the capital city Asmara's suburbs Sembel at the mouth of the river Anseba, another site was found from the ninth century BC of another agricultural and urban settlement that traded both with the Sabaeans across the Red Sea and with the civilizations of the Nile Valley further west along caravan routes that followed the Anseba River. Around this time, several cities with a high amount of Sabean remains (inscriptions, artifacts, monuments, architecture, etc.) seem to emerge in the central highlands and along the central coast including one called Saba. Some are undoubtedly built on top of older sites.
Around the eighth century BC, a kingdom known as D'mt was established in what is today northern Ethiopia and Eritrea, with its capital at Yeha in northern Ethiopia and which had extensive relations with the Sabeans in present day Yemen across the Red Sea. After D'mt's decline around the fifth century BC, the state of Aksum arose in much of Eritrea and northern Ethiopian Highlands. It grew during the fourth century BC and came into prominence during the first century AD, minting its own coins by the third century, converting in the fourth century to Christianity, as the second official Christian state (after Armenia) and the first country to feature the cross on its coins. According to Mani, it grew to be one of the four greatest civilizations in the world, on a par with China, Persia, and Rome. In the seventh century; with the advent of Islam across the Red Sea in Arabia, Aksum's trade and power on the Red Sea began to decline and the center moved farther inland to the highlands of what is today Ethiopia.
Medieval history
During the medieval period, contemporary with and following the disintegration of the Axumite state, several states as well as tribal and clan lands emerged in the area known today as Eritrea. Between the eighth and thirteenth century, northern and western Eritrea had largely come under the domination of the Beja, an Islamic, Cushitic people from northeastern Sudan. They formed five independent kingdoms known as: Naqis, Baqlin, Bazin, Jarin and Qata.[13] The Beja brought Islam to large parts of Eritrea and connected the region to the greater Islamic world dominated by the Ummayad Caliphate, followed by the Abbasid (and Mamluk) and later the Ottoman Empire. The Ummayads had taken the Dahlak archipelago by 702.
In the main highland area and adjacent coastline of what is now Eritrea there emerged a Kingdom called Midir Bahr or Midri Bahri (Tigrinya) ruled by the Bahr negus (or Bahr negash, "ruler of the sea"),[14] Parts of the southwestern lowlands were under the dominion of the Funj sultanate of Sinnar. Eastern areas under the control of the Afar since ancient times came to form part of the sultanate of Adal and when that disintegrated, the coastal areas, there among those pertaining today to Eritrea, had become Ottoman vassals. As the kingdom of Midre Bahri and feudal rule was weakened, the main highland (Kebessa) areas in Eritrea would later be named Mereb Mellash, meaning "beyond the Mereb," defining the region as the area north of the Mareb River which to this day is a natural boundary between the modern states of Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Roughly the same area also came to be referred as Hamasien in the nineteenth century, before the invasion of Ethiopian King Yohannes IV which immediately preceded and was partly repulsed by Italian colonialists. In these areas, feudal authority was particularly weak or inexistent and the autonomy of the landowning peasantry was particularly strong, a kind of Republic was exemplified by the set of local customary laws legislated by elected elders councils (shimagile).
An Ottoman invading force under Suleiman I conquered Massawa in 1557, building what is now considered the 'old town' of Massawa on Batsi island. They also conquered the towns of Hergigo, and Debarwa, the capital city of the contemporary Bahr negus (ruler), Yeshaq. Suleiman's forces fought as far south as southeastern Tigray in Ethiopia before being repulsed. Yeshaq was able to retake much of what the Ottomans captured with Ethiopian assistance, but he later twice revolted against the Emperor of Ethiopia with Ottoman support. By 1578, all revolts had ended, leaving the Ottomans in control of the important ports of Massawa and Hergigo and their environs, and leaving the province of Habesh to Beja Na'ibs (deputies). The Ottomans maintained their dominion over the northern coastal areas for nearly 300 years. Their possessions were left to their Egyptian heirs in 1865 and were taken over by the Italians in 1885.Colonial era
A Roman Catholic Priest by the name of Giuseppe Sapetto acting on behalf of a Genovese shipping company called Rubattino in 1869 purchased the locality of Assab from the Afar Sultan of Ausa (a tributary state of the Ethiopian Empire). This happened in the same year as the opening of the Suez Canal.
In the ongoing Scramble for Africa, Italy as one of the European colonial powers began vying for a possession along the strategic coast of what was to become the world's busiest shipping lane. With the approval of the Italian parliament and King Umberto I of Italy (later succeeded by his son Victor Emmanuel III), the government of Italy bought the Rubattino company's holdings and expanded its possessions northward along the Red Sea coast toward and beyond Massawa, encroaching on and quickly expelling previously 'Egyptian' possessions. The Italians met with stiffer resistance in the Eritrean highlands from the army of the Ethiopian Emperor Yohannes IV.
Nevertheless the Italians consolidated their possessions into one colony, henceforth known as Eritrea, territory of Italy as of New Years Day 1890. The Kingdom of Italy ruled Eritrea from 1890 to 1940. In 1936, Mussolini created the Italian Empire (Italian East Africa), with the union of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Italian Somalia. Eritrea enjoyed considerable industrialization and development of modern infrastructure during Italian rule (such as roads and the Eritrean Railway).
The Italians remained the colonial power in Eritrea throughout the lifetime of fascism and the beginnings of World War II when they were defeated by Allied forces in 1941, and Eritrea became a British protectorate.[17] Noted artist Aldo Giorgini was a young child caught up in this difficult transitional period, and his experiences during this time became a recurrent theme in his artwork. The best Italian colonial forces were the Eritrean Ascari, who were defined by Amedeo Guillet as "the Prussians of Africa, but without the defects of the Prussians". They actively supported even the Italian guerrilla against the British between 1941 and 1943.
After the war, the United Nations conducted a lengthy inquiry regarding the status of Eritrea, with the superpowers each vying for a stake in the state's future. Britain, the last administrator at the time, put forth the suggestion to partition Eritrea between Sudan and Ethiopia, separating Christians and Muslims. The idea was instantly rejected by Eritrean political parties as well as the UN.[18] The United States point of view was expressed by its then chief foreign policy advisor John Foster Dulles who said:
From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people must receive consideration. Nevertheless, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea Basin and considerations of security and world peace make it necessary that the country [Eritrea] has to be linked with our ally, Ethiopia.
—John Foster Dulles, 1952
A UN plebiscite voted 46 to 10 to have Eritrea be federated with Ethiopia which was later stipulated on December 2, 1950 in resolution 390 (V). Eritrea would have its own parliament and administration and would be represented in what had been the Ethiopian parliament and was now the federal parliament.[3] In 1961 the 30-year Eritrean Struggle for Independence, began after years of peaceful student protests against Ethiopian violation of Eritrean democratic rights and autonomy had culminated in violent repression and the Emperor of Ethiopia Haile Selassie I's dissolution of the federation in 1961 followed by shutting down the parliament and declaring Eritrea the fourteenth province of Ethiopia in 1962.
Struggle for independence
The sandals worn by the fighters of independence have become iconic. This monument in Asmara was erected in memoriam.
The sandals worn by the fighters of independence have become iconic. This monument in Asmara was erected in memoriam.
Eritreans formed the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and rebelled. The ELF was initially a conservative grass-roots movement dominated by Muslim lowlanders and thus received backing from Arab socialist governments such as Syria and Egypt. Ethiopia's imperial government received support from the United States which had established a radio listening base (the Kagnew base) in Eritrea's Ethiopian-occupied capital, Asmara. Internal divisions within the ELF based on religion, ethnicity, clan and, sometimes, personalities and ideologies, led to the weakening and factioning of the ELF from which sprung the Eritrean People's Liberation Front.
The EPLF professed Marxism and egalitarian values devoid of gender, religion, or ethnic bias. It's leadership was educated in China. It came to be supported by a growing Eritrean diaspora. Bitter fighting broke out between the ELF and EPLF during the late 1970s and 1980s for dominance over Eritrea. The ELF continued to dominate the Eritrean landscape well into the 1970s when the struggle for independence neared victory due to Ethiopia's internal turmoil caused by a socialist revolution against monarchy there.
The ELF's gains suffered when Ethiopia's ailing US-backed Emperor was deposed and replaced by the Derg, a Marxist military junta with backing from the Soviet Union and other communist countries, who continued the Ethiopian policy of repressing Eritrean "separatists" with increased military assistance and fervour. Nevertheless, the Eritrean resistance which saw itself forced to retreat from most of the Eritrean countryside it had previously occupied, became instead entrenched in the northern parts of the country around the Sudanese border from where the most important supply lines came. The heavily bombarded and embattled northern town of Nakfa came to symbolize the Eritrean struggle. (The Eritrean currency is named after it.)
The numbers of the EPLF swelled in the 1980s as did that of Ethiopian resistance movements with which the EPLF struck alliances to overthrow the communist Ethiopian regime, weakening and all but annihilating the precursor ELF. However, due to their own Marxist orientation, neither EPLF nor any of the Ethiopian resistance movements were able to acquire any significant US/Western or Arab support against the Soviet backed might of the Ethiopian military which has since been sub-Saharan Africa's largest, outside of South Africa. The EPLF relied largely on armaments captured from the Ethiopian army itself as well as financial and political support from the Eritrean diaspora and the cooperation of neighbouring states hostile to Ethiopia such as Somalia and Sudan (although the support of the latter was briefly interrupted and turned into hostility in agreement with Ethiopia during the Gaafar Nimeiry administration between 1971 and 1985).
Drought, famine, and intensive offensives launched by the Ethiopian army on Eritrea took a heavy toll on the population — more than half a million fled to Sudan as refugees. Amid the culmination of Soviet support to Ethiopia and a major fall-out between Eritrean and Ethiopian anti-government rebels, the EPLF achieved two of its greatest and most decisive victories. In 1985, Eritrean elite commandos infiltrated the Ethiopian and Soviet held air force base in Asmara and destroyed all 30 fighter jets there, suffering only one casualty. In 1988 during a massive Ethiopian military offensive against Eritrean rebels, a third of the Ethiopian army was annihilated in the northern Eritrean town of Afabet.
Following the decline of the Soviet Union in 1989 and diminishing support for the Ethiopian war, Eritrean rebels advanced further, capturing the port of Massawa and putting the Ethiopian and Soviet naval capabilities there out of action. By 1990 and early 1991 virtually all Eritrean territory had been liberated by EPLF except for the capital, whose only connection with the rest of government-held Ethiopia during the last year of the war was by an air-bridge. In 1991, Eritrean and Ethiopian rebels jointly held the Ethiopian capital under siege as the Ethiopian communist dictator Mengistu Hailemariam fled to Zimbabwe where he lives to this day despite requests for extradition by both Eritrea and Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian army finally capitulated and Eritrea was completely in Eritrean hands in May 24, 1991 when the rebels marched into Asmara while Ethiopian rebels with Eritrean assistance overtook the government in Ethiopia. The new Ethiopian government conceded to Eritrea's demands to have an internationally (UN) supervised referendum dubbed UNOVER to be held in Eritrea which ended in April 1993 with an overwhelming vote by Eritreans for independence. Independence was declared on May 24, 1993.
Independence
Upon Eritrea's declaration of independence, the leader of the EPLF, Isaias Afewerki, became Eritrea's first Provisional President, and the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (later renamed the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, or PFDJ) created a government.
Faced with limited economic resources and a country shattered by decades of war, the government embarked on a reconstruction and defense effort later called the Warsai Yikalo Program project based on the labour of national servicemen and women. It is still ongoing and combines military service with construction, teaching as well as agricultural work to improve the country's food security.
The government also attempts to tap into the resources of the Eritreans living abroad by levying a 2% tax on the gross income of those who wish to gain full economic rights and access as citizens in Eritrea (land ownership, business license etc). while at the same time encouraging tourism and investment both from Eritreans living abroad and people of other nations and nationalities.
This has been complicated by Eritrea's tumultuous relations with its neighbours, lack of stability and subsequent political problems.
Eritrea severed diplomatic relations with Sudan in 1994 citing that the latter was hosting islamic terrorist groups to destabilize Eritrea and both countries entered into an acrimonious relationship, each accusing the other of hosting various opposition rebel groups or "terrorists" and soliciting outside support to destabilize the other. Diplomatic relations were resumed over 10 years later in 2005 following a reconciliation agreement reached with the help of Qatar's negotiation in 1999. Eritrea now plays a prominent role in the internal Sudanese peace and reconciliation effort.
Eritrea was also embroiled in a brief war with Yemen over a border dispute surrounding the Hanish Islands in 1996 which was later resolved by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 1998 and relations between both states have since normalized.
Perhaps the conflict with the deepest impact on independent Eritrea has been the renewed hostility with Ethiopia. In 1998, a border war with Ethiopia over the town of Badme occurred. The Eritrean-Ethiopian War ended in 2000 with a negotiated agreement known as the Algiers Agreement, which assigned an independent, UN-associated boundary commission known as the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC), whose task was to clearly identify the border between the two countries and issue a final and binding ruling. Along with the agreement the UN established a Temporary Security Zone consisting of a 25 kilometre demilitarized buffer zone within Eritrea running along the length of the disputed border between the two states and patrolled by UN troops in the mission named UNMEE. Ethiopia was to withdraw to positions held before the outbreak of hostilities in May of 1998 there among Badme. The peace agreement would be completed with the implementation of the Border Commission's ruling, also ending the task of the peacekeeping mission of UNMEE. The EEBC's verdict came in April 2002 which awarded Badme to Eritrea. However, Ethiopia still refuses to implement the ruling it had signed, resulting in the continuation of the UNMEE mission and a continued hostility between the two states who as of yet do not have any diplomatic relations.[30] Diplomatic relations with Djibouti were briefly severed during the border war with Ethiopia in 1998 but later resumed in 2000 due to a dispute over Djibouti's intimate relation with Ethiopia during the war.[31]
