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. A UN plebiscite voted 46 to 10 to have Eritrea be federated with Ethiopia which was later stipulated on December 2 , in resolution V.
Eritrea would have its own parliament and administration and would be represented in what had been the Ethiopian parliament and would become the federal parliament. The Emperor declared Eritrea the fourteenth province of Ethiopia in 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. Its leadership was educated in China. It came to be supported by a growing Eritrean diaspora. The ELF continued to dominate the Eritrean landscape well into the s when the struggle for independence neared victory due to Ethiopia's internal turmoil caused by a socialist revolution against the 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 fervor. 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 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 neighboring states hostile to Ethiopia such as Somalia and Sudan although the support of the latter was briefly interrupted and turned into hostility against EPLF and Eritrean refugees at large, in agreement with Ethiopia during the Gaafar Nimeiry administration between and 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 alone and unsupported. In , 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 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 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 and early 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 , Eritrean and Ethiopian rebels jointly held the Ethiopian capital under siege as the Ethiopian president Mengistu Haile Mariam 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 when the rebels marched into Asmara while Ethiopian rebels with Eritrean assistance overtook the government in Ethiopia.
Independence was declared on May 24 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 based on the labour of national servicemen and women. 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 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 following a reconciliation agreement reached with the help of Qatar 's negotiation in Eritrea was also embroiled in a brief war with Yemen over a border dispute surrounding the Hanish Islands in which was later resolved by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in [28].
Yemen was granted full ownership of the larger islands while Eritrea was awarded the peripheral islands to the southwest of the larger islands [29]. 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 , a border war with Ethiopia over the town of Badme occurred. The Eritrean-Ethiopian War ended in 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 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.
However, Ethiopia refused to withdraw its military from positions in the disputed areas, including Badme, and also refused to implement the EEBC's ruling and the dispute is ongoing. Eritrea is divided into six regions zobas and subdivided into districts "sub-zobas".
The geographical extent of the regions is based on their respective hydrological properties. This a dual intent on the part of the Eritrean government: to provide each administration with sufficient control over its agricultural capacity and eliminate historical intra-regional conflicts.
The National Assembly of seats of which 75 were occupied by handpicked EPLF guerilla members while the rest went to local candidates and diasporans more or less sympathetic of the regime , formed in shortly after independence, "elected" the current president, Isaias Afewerki. No time frame was announced for the alleged obscure presidency.
Eritrea officially the State of Eritrea, is a country in Eastern Africa, with its capital at Asmara. Research shows tools found in the Barka Valley dating from BC appear to offer the first concrete evidence of human settlement in the area. The British and Americans preferred to cede all of Eritrea except the Western. Asmara is a city of Eritrea, a country of the Africa. It is the Eritrean National Cycling Team On Harnet Avenue, Asmara, Eritrea Eritrean, Eric Lafforgue,. Eritrean African American History Dating from the s, Bar Zilli in Asmara, Eritrea.
National elections have been periodically scheduled and cancelled; none have ever been held in the country. Independent local sources of political information on Eritrean domestic politics are scarce; in September the government closed down all of the nation's privately owned print media , and outspoken critics of the government have been arrested and held without trial, according to various international observers, including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International.
In the U. In , Reporters Without Borders , ranked Eritrea bottom in the world for overall press freedom in its annual study. However, local elections have continued in Eritrea. The most recent round of local government elections were held in May But it has withdrawn its representative to the AU in protest of the AU's lack of leadership in facilitating the implementation of a binding border decision demarcating the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Eritrea's relationship with the United States is complicated. Although the two nations have a close working relationship regarding the on-going war on terror, there has been a growing tension in other areas. As of September , relations with the US appear to be worsening. Economic sanctions against Eritrea could soon follow. Within the region, Eritrea's relations with Ethiopia turned from that of close alliance to a deadly rivalry that led to a war from May to June in which approximately 19, Eritreans [35] and , Ethiopians [36] [37] were killed.
External issues include an undemarcated border with Sudan , a war with Yemen over the Hanish Islands in , and a recent border conflict with Ethiopia. The undemarcated border with Sudan poses a problem for Eritrean external relations.
Meanwhile, Eritrea has been recognized as a broker for peace between the separate factions of the Sudanese civil war. A dispute with Yemen over the Hanish Islands in resulted in a brief war. As part of an agreement to cease hostilities the two nations agreed to refer the issue to the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague. At the conclusion of the proceedings, both nations acquiesced to the decision. Since both governments have remained wary of one another but relations are relatively normal.
The undemarcated border with Ethiopia is the primary external issue facing Eritrea.
This led to a long and bloody border war between and The situation is further escalated by the continued effort of the Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders in supporting each other's opposition. On July 26 , the Associated Press reported that Eritrea had been supplying weapons to the Somali insurgent group Al-Shabaab , but no evidence was discovered, who is allegedly tied to al Qaeda.
The incident has fueled concerns that Somalia may become the grounds for a de-facto war between Eritrea and Ethiopia , who invaded Somalia in December with U. The Eritrean government has been accused of sponsoring, arming and hosting numerous militant leaderships and separatist rebels in the horn of Africa. In the Reporters Without Borders Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index Eritrea ranked last at number , [50] unseating the previous holder North Korea which had been last every other year of the survey.
Reporters Without Borders claims that, in Eritrea, a private newspaper has been shut down and generally exorcised from the country by the President Isaias Afewerki. Also, any journalists who criticize the president or his regime are immediately put into prison; amongst the many reporters and writers who have been put in jail, four have died in detention.
Although Eritrea is new at the very bottom of the list in , its positions by year are as follows:. Eritrea is located in East Africa, more specifically the Horn of Africa , and is bordered on the northeast and east by the Red Sea. The country is virtually bisected by one of the world's longest mountain ranges, the Great Rift Valley , with fertile lands to the west and the descent to desert in the East.
Off the sandy and arid coastline is situated the Dahlak Archipelago and its fishing grounds. The land to the south, in the highlands, is slightly drier and cooler. Eritrea at the southern end of the Red Sea is the home of the fork in the rift. It also makes Harnet emerge from a long silence.
It further introduces the main characters of this paper: second and 1. It was long-distance nationalism Anderson , Glick-Schiller and Fouron that continued to shape their individual lives and the communities they built abroad and that sustained their hope of returning. Yet, it is the diaspora where most of them seem to have arrived today. This again reflects their strong emphasis on the forced nature of their immigration, and highlights long-distance nationalism and the myth of return as the community's most outstanding features.
Paradoxically it was only after the successful war for Eritrean independence that a more permanent settlement in Germany also began to be considered as an alternative to return — even if only for an intermediate, undefined period of time.