Last July, as I strolled down Liberation Avenue in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital, a man yelled out at me: ‘The rains may be scarce but at least we finally have peace!’ In the week after the historic visit to Eritrea of the new Ethiopian prime minister, Abiye Ahmed, the streets of Asmara were jubilant. Its wide avenues were plastered with banners celebrating the renewed kinship of sibling nations. For many, the thawing of relations between the two countries, at war for 20 years, signals the dawning of a new era.
Eritrea, an abbreviation of Red Sea in Latin (Mare Erythraeum), was carved out of east Africa by the Italians, who went on to occupy it for 50-odd years until their defeat by the British in 1941. Its very existence as a political entity was forged out of colonialism. The British placed Eritrea under military administration until 1952 when it was federated to Ethiopia. The Ethiopian emperor, Haile Selassie, then annexed Eritrea in 1962, breaching the terms of this federation. Thirty years of brutal struggle for independence followed, during which two different independence movements emerged: the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) and the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). In the 1970s, while they were fighting the Ethiopians, then ruled by the notoriously vicious Dergue regime, these two factions were also at war with each other. The EPLF came out victorious and in 1991, when the Dergue fell, Eritrea gained its independence following a self-determination referendum. EPLF leader Isaias Afwerki became the first president of Eritrea.
