HISTORY
Prior
to Italian colonization in 1885, what is now Eritrea had been
ruled by the various local or international powers that successively
dominated the Red Sea region. In 1896, the Italians used Eritrea
as a springboard for their disastrous attempt to conquer Ethiopia.
Eritrea was placed under British military administration after
the Italian surrender in World War II. In 1952, a UN resolution
federating Eritrea with Ethiopia went into effect. The resolution
ignored Eritrean pleas for independence but guaranteed Eritreans
some democratic rights and a measure of autonomy. Almost immediately
after the federation went into effect, however, these rights began
to be abridged or violated.
In 1962,
Emperor Haile Sellassie unilaterally dissolved the Eritrean parliament
and annexed the country, sparking the Eritrean fight for independence
from Ethiopia that continued after Haile Sellassie was ousted
in a coup in 1974. The new Ethiopian Government, called the Derg,
was a Marxist military junta led by strongman Mengistu Haile Miriam.
During the 1960s, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) led the Eritrean independence struggle. In 1970, some members of the group broke away to form the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF). By the late 1970s, the EPLF had become the dominant armed Eritrean group fighting against the Ethiopian Government, with Isaias Afwerki as its leader. The EPLF used material captured from the Ethiopian Army to fight against the government.
By 1977
the EPLF was poised to drive the Ethiopians out of Eritrea. That
same year, however, a massive airlift of Soviet arms to Ethiopia
enabled the Ethiopian Army to regain the initiative and forced
the EPLF to retreat to the bush. Between 1978 and 1986, the Derg
launched eight major offensives against the independence movement--all
failed. In 1988, the EPLF captured Afabet, headquarters of the
Ethiopian Army in northeastern Eritrea, prompting the Ethiopian
Army to withdraw from its garrisons in Eritrea's western lowlands.
EPLF fighters then moved into position around Keren, Eritrea's
second-largest city. Meanwhile, other dissident movements were
making headway throughout Ethiopia. At the end of the 1980s, the
Soviet Union informed Mengistu that it would not be renewing its
defense and cooperation agreement. With the withdrawal of Soviet
support and supplies, the Ethiopian Army's morale plummeted, and
the EPLF--along with other Ethiopian rebel forces--began to advance
on Ethiopian positions.
The United States played a facilitative role in the peace talks in Washington during the months leading up to the May 1991 fall of the Mengistu regime. In mid-May, Mengistu resigned as head of the Ethiopian Government and went into exile in Zimbabwe, leaving a caretaker government in Addis Ababa. Later that month, the United States chaired talks in London to formalize the end of the war. The four major combatant groups, including the EPLF, attended these talks.
Having
defeated the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea, EPLF troops took control
of their homeland. In May 1991, the EPLF established the Provisional
Government of Eritrea (PGE) to administer Eritrean affairs until
a referendum could be held on independence and a permanent government
established. EPLF leader Isaias became the head of the PGE, and
the EPLF Central Committee served as its legislative body.
A high-level
U.S. delegation was present in Addis Ababa for the July 1-5, 1991
conference that established a transitional government in Ethiopia.
The EPLF attended the July conference as an observer and held
talks with the new transitional government regarding Eritrea's
relationship to Ethiopia. The outcome of those talks was an agreement
in which the Ethiopians recognized the right of the Eritreans
to hold a referendum on independence.
Although some EPLF cadres at one time espoused a Marxist ideology, Soviet assistance for Mengistu limited the level of Eritrean interest in seeking Soviet support. The fall of communist regimes in the former Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc convinced them it was a failed system. The EPLF (and later its successor, the PFDJ) expressed its commitment to establishing a democratic form of government and a free-market economy in Eritrea. The United States agreed to provide assistance to both Ethiopia and Eritrea, conditional on continued progress toward democracy and human rights.
On April
23-25, 1993, Eritreans voted overwhelmingly for independence from
Ethiopia in a UN-monitored free and fair referendum. The Eritrean
authorities declared Eritrea an independent state on April 27,
and Eritrea officially celebrated its independence on May 24,
1993.
