Adoption of the federal scheme

In 1950 the United Nations (UN), under the prompting of the United States, resolved to join Eritrea to Ethiopia within two years. The proposed federation would provide Eritrea with autonomy under its own constitution and elected government. Elections to a new Eritrean Assembly in 1952 gave the Unionist Party the largest number of seats but not a majority; the party thus formed a government in coalition with a Muslim faction. The Eritrean constitution, prepared by the UN in consultation with Emperor Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, was adopted by the Eritrean Assembly on July 10, 1952, and ratified by Haile Selassie on August 11. The act of federation was ratified by the emperor on September 11, and British authorities officially relinquished control on September 15.

Failure of the federal scheme

The federal scheme was short-lived, mainly because the imperial government in Addis Ababa was unwilling to abide by its provisions. First, the Eritrean constitution sought to establish an equilibrium between ethnic and religious groups. It made Tigrinya and Arabic the official languages of Eritrea, and it allowed local communities to choose the language of education for their children. In the spirit of the constitution, it became a practice to ensure parity between Christians and Muslims in appointment to state office. This delicate balance was destroyed by Ethiopian interference, and Muslims were the initial losers, as Arabic was eliminated from state education and Muslims were squeezed out of public employment.

Furthermore, the Ethiopians were anxious to eliminate any traces of separatism in Eritrea, and to that end they harassed the leaders of the independence movement until many of them fled abroad. With the collaboration of their Unionist allies and in express violation of the constitution, they also suppressed all attempts to form autonomous Eritrean organizations. Political parties were banned in 1955, trade unions were banned in 1958, and in 1959 the name Eritrean Government was changed to “Eritrean Administration” and Ethiopian law was imposed. Eventually, even Ethiopia’s Eritrean allies were alienated—by crude intervention in the running of the Eritrean Administration, by financial disputes between Asmara and Addis Ababa, and by mounting pressure on the Eritreans to renounce autonomy. The federation was already dead when, on November 14, 1962, the Ethiopian parliament and Eritrean Assembly voted unanimously for the abolition of Eritrea’s federal status, making Eritrea a simple province of the Ethiopian empire. Soon afterward Tigrinya was banned in education; it was replaced by Amharic, which at the time was the official language of Ethiopia.

Beginning of armed revolt

Muslims had been the first to suffer from Ethiopia’s intervention in Eritrea, and it was they who formed the first opposition movement. In 1960, leaders of the defunct independence movement who were then living in exile announced the formation of the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF). The founders, all Muslims, were led by Idris Mohammed Adam, a leading political figure in Eritrea in the 1940s. By the mid-1960s the ELF was able to field a small guerrilla force in the western plain of Eritrea, and thus it began a war that was to last nearly three decades. In the early years the ELF drew support from Muslim communities in the western and eastern lowlands as well as the northern hills. It also sought support from Sudan, Syria, Iran, and other Islamic states; used Arabic as its official language; and adopted Arab nomenclature in its organization. Ethiopian authorities portrayed the movement as an Arab tool and sought to rally Eritrean Christians to oppose it. Deteriorating economic and political conditions in Eritrea, however, combined to produce the opposite result.

During the 1930s and ’40s the Eritrean economy had been stimulated by Italian colonial activity and by the special conditions created by World War II. After the war the local economy deflated, and it remained stagnant during the entire period of federation with Ethiopia. Many thousands of Eritreans were forced to emigrate to Ethiopia and the Middle East in search of employment. The suppression of the nascent trade-union movement further embittered this class, and many Eritrean workers—Muslims and Christians alike—rallied to the nationalist movement. In addition, the banning of Tigrinya in state education helped to turn an entire generation of Eritrean Christian students toward nationalism. Christians began to join the ELF in significant numbers at the end of the 1960s. Among them were students who had become politically radicalized in the Ethiopian student movement, which itself became a centre of opposition to the regime of Haile Selassie in the 1960s and ’70s.

The spreading revolution

The ELF was now able to extend its operations to the central highlands of Eritrea—the home of the Tigray. However, the arrival of the radical students coincided with the emergence of a serious rift between the leadership of the ELF, which was permanently resident in Cairo, and the rank and file, which remained in the field. The newcomers joined the opposition to the leadership, and in 1972 several groups that had defected from the ELF joined forces to form the Eritrean Liberation Front–People’s Liberation Forces (ELF–PLF). For several years the two rival organizations fought each other as well as the Ethiopians. After a series of splits and mergers, the ELF–PLF came under the control of former students, among whom Christians predominated, and was renamed the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), a Marxist and secular organization.

The EPLF had made its presence felt by 1974, when the imperial regime in Ethiopia collapsed. While a power struggle for the succession was waged in Addis Ababa, the two Eritrean fronts liberated most of Eritrea. By 1977 the nationalist revolution seemed on the verge of victory. Yet it was not to be. A military dictatorship—also espousing Marxism—emerged in Addis Ababa, and, armed and assisted by the Soviet bloc, the new Ethiopian regime was able to regain most of Eritrea in 1978. Warfare on a scale unprecedented in sub-Saharan Africa raged for the next two decades. The Ethiopians made enormous efforts with massive land attacks and heavy weaponry, but they had no success against the small and lightly armed guerrilla forces.

The violence of war and indiscriminate oppression in their homeland turned most Eritreans against Ethiopia, thereby producing a steady stream of young recruits for the nationalist movement. Throughout the 1980s the fighting was carried out by the EPLF, which by 1981 had succeeded in eliminating the ELF and had emerged as the unchallenged champion of Eritrean nationalism. In the latter part of the decade, the Soviet Union terminated its military aid to Ethiopia. Unable to find another patron and faced with armed rebellion in other parts of the country, the regime in Addis Ababa began to falter. The final act occurred in 1991, when a rebel military offensive, led by the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (a group that had long been fighting for the autonomy of Tigray in Ethiopia), swept toward the capital. The Ethiopian army disintegrated, and in May the EPLF assumed complete control of Eritrea.

Three decades of war had produced among Eritreans a sense of unity and solidarity that they had not known before. Indeed, an entire generation had come of age during the struggle for independence, which was now to become a reality. The new regime in Ethiopia supported Eritrea’s independence, and a separation was effected amicably. In a referendum held two years after liberation, on April 23–25, 1993, the overwhelming majority of Eritreans voted for independence. On May 21 Isaias Afwerki, the secretary-general of the EPLF, was made president of a transitional government, and on May 24 he proclaimed Eritrea officially independent.