Africa’s Hottest Frozen Border Boils Over

Africa’s Hottest Frozen Border Boils Over

By Michela Wrong
FPLogo

Some events come out of the blue, as surprising as thunderbolts. Others feel like confirmations of dour predictions, as grindingly inevitable as winter’s onset. The outbreak of heavy fighting between Eritrean and Ethiopian troops on their mutual border on June 12, which is reported to have left hundreds dead, falls into the latter category. No one should be surprised. And some mea culpas are in order.

AMARA, ERITREA:  Eritrean children play 07 June 1991 on an Ethiopian army tank. The roadside was destroyed by Eritrean Liberation Front (EPLF) rebels in the battle for Amara, the capital city of Eritrea, that fell 20 May to EPLF rebels after 17 years of war. (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)
AMARA, ERITREA: Eritrean children play 07 June 1991 on an Ethiopian army tank. The roadside was destroyed by Eritrean Liberation Front (EPLF) rebels in the battle for Amara, the capital city of Eritrea, that fell 20 May to EPLF rebels after 17 years of war. (Photo credit should read ALEXANDER JOE/AFP/Getty Images)

Neither of these Horn of Africa countries has an impressive human rights record, so members of the Ethiopian and Eritrean diasporas — both of which contain a disproportionate number of political asylum seekers — initially speculated that the regimes had fabricated a clash in order to distract from a flurry of embarrassing reports published recently by the United Nations and the advocacy group Human Rights Watch. (Eritrea stands accused of committing crimes against humanity, including the systematic enslavement, torture, and rape of its own population, while Ethiopia is accused of killing some 400 protesters and arresting tens of thousands of others in its Oromia region since November of last year.)

But this cynical theory became harder to believe after both sides confirmed the gravity of the border incident, in which tanks and heavy artillery were reportedly deployed and terrified locals fled to nearby refugee camps. A “conservative estimate” released by the Eritrean Ministry of Information put the number of Ethiopian dead and wounded at 200 and 300, respectively, and the Ethiopian government, while rejecting that death toll, acknowledged that “a major engagement” had taken place. This would make the events of June 12 the most significant flare-up since the 1998-2000 border war that left more than 100,000 people dead.

Each side accuses the other of initiating hostilities, claims that are difficult to verify. But what the clash underlines for certain is the folly of fallowing a border dispute to fester indefinitely.  An undermarcated border dispute to fester  between two governments that loathe each other is a grenade whose pin has been pulled. The international community may choose to ignore it, and in the short term may get away with this pose of studied indifference. But the grenade will eventually explode.

In April 2002, a boundary commission seated in The Hague whose five members had been approved by Ethiopia and Eritrea issued a border ruling that was meant to settle — peacefully and permanently — the vexed question of where the border between the two countries lies. The former Italian colony of Eritrea, swallowed up by giant Ethiopia in 1962, had fought a 30-year liberation war against Addis Ababa and won independence in 1991, only to return to the battlefield seven years later when fighting broke out on its frontier with Ethiopia.

The boundary commission’s findings were clear. While some disputed areas were allotted to Ethiopia, the two-donkey village that had served as a flashpoint for the war — Badme — belonged to Eritrea. The commission found that Eritrea had initiated hostilities — a claim Asmara disputed furiously — but on the narrow issue of Badme, Eritrea was in the right.

The problem was that Ethiopian forces already occupied Badme and its surrounding plains, and Addis Ababa knew that its public would judge harshly any agreement to withdraw from territory won at the cost of thousands of Ethiopian lives. So the Ethiopian government said it accepted the boundary commission’s ruling, but called for a “dialogue” on implementation. Its troops stayed put on what it acknowledged to be Eritrean land.

Read more: Africa’s Hottest Frozen Border Boils Over

Source: FP

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