The Eritrean Long March: The Strategic Withdrawal of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), 1978–1979

The Eritrean Long March: The Strategic Withdrawal of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF), 1978–1979* ) Awet T. Weldemichael Abstract This article examines the controversial Strategic Withdrawal of Eritrean fighters (EPLF) in the face of Soviet-backed Ethiopian offensives during the Eritrean War of Independence of 1961-91. It highlights the long-term effects of these decisive battles and argues that despite immediate Eritrean setbacks and Ethiopian successes in these encounters, the ultimate strengths and weaknesses of the two adversaries first became apparent during the Withdrawal. Eventually, the Eritrean independence fighters decisively won the war because, as a guerrilla army, they were more adaptable to the fast changing conditions on the ground. Blinded by their belief in armaments and numbers, their far superior foe neglected to correctly appraise the situation and improvise strategy accordingly. This article stops in 1980 when the EPLF went over to the tactical offensive. When guerrillas engage a stronger enemy, they withdraw when he advances; harass him when he stops; strike him when he is weary; pursue him when he withdraws. In guerrilla strategy, the enemy’s rear, flanks, and other vulnerable spots are his vital points, and there he must be harassed, attacked, dispersed, exhausted and annihilated. – Mao Zedong * I thank the anonymous readers for their constructive feedback and advice, and the editor of the JMH for his meticulous editorial and substantive advice. I am grateful to Eritrean and Awet T. Weldemichael is a Research Fellow at the University of Bologna’s Institute of Advanced Studies. He attended the University of Asmara in Eritrea and Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2008, and went on to teach International Studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. He also worked for the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The Journal of Military History 73 (October 2009): 1231-1271. Copyright © 2009 by The Society for Military History, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission in writing from the Editor, Journal of Military History, George C. Marshall Library, Virginia Military Institute, P.O. Drawer 1600, Lexington, VA 24450. Authorization to photocopy items for internal and personal use is granted by the copyright holder for libraries and other users registered with the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC), 121 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923 USA (www.copyright.com), provided the appropriate fee is paid to the CCC. ( 1231 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL I n 1978 the Ethiopian government prepared an elaborate military strategy and allocated a significant portion of its resources and personnel to the ongoing counterinsurgency war in Eritrea. Confident of victory, Addis Ababa declared the Eritrean independence war at an end. Many foreigners suggested that the setbacks Eritrean insurgents began to experience signaled the start of their demise. This article reconstructs the tumultuous months between June 1978 and July 1979 when, from near victory, Eritrean insurgents withdrew in the face of incessant offensives by the Soviet-backed Ethiopian military. In particular, it focuses on the planning and execution of the now-legendary “Strategic Withdrawal” of the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to the rugged terrain of northern and northeastern Eritrea. Acknowledging that it constituted one of the biggest setbacks Eritrean independence fighters endured, it will nonetheless be argued here that the Strategic Withdrawal was a planned and necessary tactical concession they made in return for strategic gains. In the short term the EPLF’s decision ensured its survival. In the long term, it made possible the Ethiopian government’s defeat in 1991 and the independence of Eritrea in 1993. This article highlights the Weltanschauung that shaped the EPLF decision to withdraw and points out valuable lessons its leadership learned with respect to planning and executing future war decisions. It does so by documenting Eritrean independence fighters’ retention of the strategic initiative amidst their tactical losses. While contributing to the history of the Eritrean independence war, the article also explores and develops broader notions of military tactics and strategy in an African context. Not all withdrawals herald defeat, nor do all advances signal eventual victory. The narrative is based on Eritrean and Ethiopian documents researched in Ethiopia and Eritrea. Eritrean sources consulted range from primary documents housed at the Research and Documentation Center in Asmara to interviews with the highest ranking independence leaders and their rank-and-file fighters. The Ethiopian Ministry of National Defense in Addis Ababa granted access to previously restricted documents on most of the military's operations during the time under investigation. Differences in Ethiopian and Eritrean periodization and classification of the offensives make it difficult to corroborate statistical information for individual offensives. Nevertheless, aggregate data on the Ethiopian side for this article’s timeframe confirmed with surprising accuracy the account on the Eritrean side, including the goals and deployment of forces of both sides, and details of personnel losses and material damage the Eritreans claimed to have inflicted on the Ethiopian side. Ethiopian archives and my interviewees; Professor Bahru Zewde who supervised this projectat its initial stages as an undergraduate thesis; and my many friends, especially Melissa WingardPhillips and Anoosh Jorjorian who read and commented on this article at its various stages. Special thanks to Etelle Higonnet for her thorough editorial and substantive help. 1232 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 The Historical Context In 1950, the newly established United Nations (UN) decided to federate the former Italian colony of Eritrea with Ethiopia, without plebiscites of any sort. The UN Federal Act envisaged an Eritrea autonomous from imperial Ethiopia,1 but neglected to implement any tangible guarantees that Ethiopia would respect the arrangement.2 Emperor Haile Selassie's government violated the principles of the UN Act with impunity, claiming that Eritrea had always been part of Ethiopia and that the federation was a foreign aberration. When Ethiopian repression pushed even moderate Eritreans to take up arms in order to rectify this violation of their right to self-determination, successive Ethiopian governments readily dismissed them and their cause as instigated by foreign enemies—Arabs, imperialists, narrow nationalists, or others, depending on the ideological orientation of the succeeding Ethiopian regimes—all conspiring to carve out Eritrea from its “mother” Ethiopia.3 Meanwhile, from a handful of armed “bandits” in the distant, far northern periphery, the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) evolved into a popular guerrilla army that proved difficult to quash. Eritrean veterans from the Sudanese army, former members of the Eritrean Police and other volunteers swelled the ELF ranks. Supplies started trickling in from the Eritrean Diaspora and neighboring Arab countries. By the mid-1960s, ELF activities had spread throughout Eritrea like wildfire. Once ignited, the blaze grew with each passing month until the inherent challenges of growth caught up with it.4 Eventually, the parochial leadership and poor organization of the ELF were rejected by more democratically oriented elements. Composed of high school and university-educated urbanites from all parts of Eritrea as well as from those in exile, these dissenters broke away from the ELF in three splinter groups between 1969 and 1970. These groups merged gradually to form the Eritrean People's Liberation Forces—later Front—(EPLF) in 1973.5 1. United Nations General Assembly, Fifth Session, Resolution 390 (V). “Eritrea: Report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea; Report of the Interim Committee of the General Assembly on the Report of the United Nations Commission to Eritrea,” December 2, 1950. 2. See Bereket Habte Selassie, “From British Rule to Federation and Annexation,” in Basil Davidson, Lionel Cliffe and Bereket Habte Selassie, eds., Behind the War in Eritrea (Nottingham: Spokesman, 1980). 3. Ethiopian Government, Selected Speeches of His Imperial Majesty Haile Selassie First, 1918 to 1967 (Addis Ababa: Imperial Ethiopian Ministry of Information, 1967), 462; Eritrean Research and Documentation Center (Asmara, Eritrea)(hereafter RDC)/Mengistu, 2/77, “Mengistu Haile Mariam, Interview,” 12/9/77, Addis Ababa. 4. Alamin Muhammad Said, Al-Thawra al-Iritriya. Al-Dafa Wa'l-Taradi: Qissat al-Inshiqaq al-Dakhilyya li'l-Thawra al-Iritriya (Asmara: Dogoli Printing Press, 1992); Othman Saleh Sabby, The History of Eritrea. Trans. Muhamad Fawaz al-Azem (Beirut, Lebanon: Dar Al-Masirah, 1974). 5. Alamin, Al-Thawra al-Iritriya, 80; Interview with Yohannes Tesfaselassie, Asmara, September 10, 1997 and January 28, 1998. Even the ELF apologist, Medhanie Tesfatsion, in his Eritrea, Dynamics of a National Question (Amsterdam: B. R. Gruner, 1986), 36, admits this, but argues that the separation of the breakaway groups was not “democratic or tolerable.” MILITARY HISTORY ( 1233 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL The ELF waged a campaign to liquidate the new splinter movements.6 Simultaneously, Haile Selassie's skillful diplomacy alienated the guerrillas from China and the Sudan, which had lent moral and material support to the movement.7 Nevertheless, things started to look up for the insurgents after 1974. The weakening of Addis Ababa’s central government and the mutinous mood of Ethiopian armed forces in Eritrea8 culminated in the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie by junior officers. These officers’ left-leaning ideological orientation alienated them from the United States, Ethiopia’s traditional arms supplier, and the Soviet Union did not fill that vacuum until 1976. Meanwhile, hostilities between the ELF and EPLF subsided in the mid-1970s,9 enabling the two insurgent groups to escalate from small-scale, guerrilla tactics to conventional, offensive warfare. As Addis Ababa’s aforementioned weaknesses were compounded by growing tension and full-blown war between Ethiopia and Somalia in 1977, Eritrean offensives proved very successful. Rural areas and towns fell to Eritrean forces one after another. By mid–1978, Ethiopian forces were besieged in Asmara, Asseb, AdiQeyeh, Barentu, and parts of Massawa.10 In mid–1978, the balance of power shifted suddenly again, this time tipping in favor of Ethiopia. A number of factors made the Ethiopian resurgence possible. In the run-up to the war with Somalia, a Soviet-supplied and financed military buildup strengthened the Ethiopian military to unprecedented levels. Before the war and immediately afterwards, the Marxist regime in Addis Ababa liquidated its civilian opponents in the country’s major towns and consolidated its grip on power. Finally, Ethiopia’s victory over Somalia raised Ethiopian morale and enabled the government to redirect its full attention northwards against the Eritrean insurgents. Eritrean fighters were forced to retreat. 6. EPLF, Political Conscientization Programme, Ta'rikh al-Nidal al-Musallah, al-Marhala al-Mutawassita (Asmara, Eritrea: EPLF, 1989), p. 68. 7. Paul B. Henze, The Horn of Africa from War to Peace (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1991), 133; David A. Korn, Ethiopia, the United States, and the Soviet Union (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1986), 3. 8. Fred Halliday and Maxine Molyneux, The Ethiopian Revolution (London: Verso, 1981),80, 172; in an interview with the author, Maj. Gen. Tekhlay Habteselassie (Asmara, September 13, 1997) said that the Ethiopian Second Division was demoralized after it fought in vain to suppress the EPLF around Alghena, in the northern extreme of Eritrea, from the end of 1973 to early 1974. The inattention to NCOs’ injuries and death during these battles, while higher officers received preferential treatment, swayed the Second Division’s rank-and-file to join the emerging revolutionary committee, the Derg. 9. EPLF, Ta'rikh al-Nidal, 68. Right up to the greater civil war in 1980-81, there was sporadic fighting between these two organizations. 10. Dan Connell and Simon Dring of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) spent considerable time with the Eritrean guerrillas during this period. Not only did they report on the guerrillas’ battles, but also on the direct intervention of Soviet, Cuban and South Yemeni per- 1234 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Prelude to Ethiopian Offensives The possibility of Eritrean military victory never crossed the minds of Ethiopian leaders. Emperor Haile Selassie I warned, “We have been patient until now with the hope that [the situation with Eritrean insurgents] will improve sooner or later,”11 indicating his capacity to eradicate the Eritrean resistance but emphasizing his restraint instead. In September 1974 the emperor was overthrown in a military coup d'état,12 which the rebellion in Eritrea helped instigate. The government of the military junta, which had called itself the Derg since mid1974, believed even more thoroughly than Haile Selassie that it would smash the Eritrean rebellion.13 But it had a major handicap that prevented it from turning its militarist vision into reality. When the Derg seized power in late 1974, it inherited a thinly-stretched and demoralized army of less than 50,000 in a country riddled with half a dozen regional rebellions (of which the one in Eritrea was the most serious).14 After Derg members shot their titular chief, respected General Aman Michael Andom, the junta refused to negotiate with rebels. Steadfast in its belief that “the Eritrean question” could be resolved with more trained soldiers and weapons to arm them, the Derg began an intensive worldwide search for arms, much to the irritation of Ethiopia's traditional arms supplier, the U.S. Since its declaration of “Ethiopian Socialism” as the way forward,15 the Derg’s need for arms found a keener response in Moscow. Despite détente, the USSR was eager to take Ethiopia under its socialist wing. In December 1976, Ethiopia and the Soviet Union signed a secret military assistance agreement.16 The first arms package of 30 tanks was delivered in March 1977, and about 100 more followed in April.17 sonnel, which aided the Ethiopian war effort. See the dossier of news clippings prepared by the Research and Information Center on Eritrea (RICE), Revolution in Eritrea: Eyewitness Reports (Heidelberg, Germany), 112-124. 11. Ethiopian Government, Selected Speeches...of Haile Selassie First, p. 462. 12. The Ethiopian Herald, September 13 and 14, 1974; Christopher Clapham, Transformation and Continuity in Revolutionary Ethiopia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 43. 13. RDC/Mengistu, 3A/78, “Mengistu's Speech on the Fourth Anniversary of the Revolution,” 12. 14. Zemecha-733, “YeAhunu Ghize YeItyopia Hayl Huneta ena Yalebet Segat” (“The Current Conditions of the Ethiopian Force and its Threats”), 20-10-1982 (EC), 1-2; Gebru Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution: War in the Horn of Africa (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 15. The Ethiopian Herald, December 21, 1974; Halliday and Molyneux, Ethiopian Revolution, 113. 16. Henze, Horn of Africa from War to Peace, 145; Korn, Ethiopia, the United States, and the Soviet Union, 29. 17. Ibid., 27. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1235 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL Fearing that Soviet assistance to Ethiopia would jeopardize its irredentist Greater Somalia project,18 the Somali Republic prepared to strike before it was too late. The Somali president, General Siad Barre, first unleashed the Somaliabased Western Somali Liberation Front (WSLF) guerrillas. Following guerrilla infiltration of the region in late May, regular Somali troops crossed the border into Ethiopia in July in a bid to reclaim the Ogaden, the Somali-speaking part of Ethiopia. The 1977 Somali invasion legitimized and increased Ethiopia’s arms shipments from its new Eastern bloc backers. Between September and October more Soviet heavy weapons were pumped into Ethiopia for “self defense,” and numerous highranking Soviet and Cuban advisors were dispatched as well. Ethiopia launched its counter-offensive into Somalia, sending 100,000 newly recruited militiamen into combat,19 supported by about 12,000 Cuban troops on the front, Yemeni technicians and experts imported from Aden, and Soviet advisors and hardware.20 The offensive lasted from late January to early March 1978. Somalia was pushed back in defeat. On March 9, it announced complete withdrawal from Ethiopia, and the WSLF withdrew from the towns to resort to guerrilla warfare.21 With Cuban forces remaining to guard the country’s borders with Somalia, almost all of Ethiopia’s manpower and matériel could now be sent north to target the Eritrean rebels. Outside of the country, the Eritrean independence movement had earned progressive credentials, leading several Eastern Bloc countries to call for a political solution.22 A series of peace talks under the auspices of East Germany were held in 18. This Somali fear was well-founded, since Soviet assistance to the Derg government in Addis Ababa had reversed the balance of power between the two sides. Earlier, the situation had been far different, given the decay of the Imperial Ethiopian Army and the obsolescence of its American-supplied weaponry “whereas Somalia has received a constant supply of modern Soviet equipment.” By Ethiopia’s own assessment of the decade before the 1974 coup, “Somali preponderance is both quantitative and qualitative. Ethiopia is at present outgunnedand … ‘out-tanked’.” Not until Soviet intervention on the side of the new military government in Addis Ababa did this balance of power change dramatically. A 1970 Memo of the Ethiopian Ministry of National Defense to the U.S. Government, quoted in Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution, p. 114. 19. Zemecha-733, “Ke 1967-1982 Megabit dres Yetesera YeHayle Ghembata” (“Recruitment of Forces Conducted from 1967 until March 1982”), 18-10-82 (EC), p. 1. 20. Zemecha-716, “YeItio-Soviet YeGara Komite YeWetaderawi Gudayoch Huneta” (“Conditions of the Ethio-Soviet Committee on Military Affairs”), ND, p. 3. 21. Mesfin Gabriel, “Victory at Jijiga,” New African (April 1978): 24-25; Henze, Horn of Africa, 150. 22. “Pressure on the Derg to settle with the Eritreans,” New African ( July 1978): 39. Nevertheless, it is important to note that not only did these countries regard the independence struggle of Eritrea as an internal Ethiopian matter, but, led by the USSR, they also had aligned themselves firmly on the side of the Ethiopian government. 1236 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Berlin, but to no avail.23 To defuse mounting pressure and lend its military effort a popular legitimacy, the Derg called an unprecedented seminar in Addis Ababa to discuss the Eritrean problem. Held from June 16 to 26, 1978, the seminar resolved that the war against the Eritrean liberation movement should be fought to the last man. Meanwhile, bombings of Eritrean villages by the Ethiopian air force left tens of thousands of Eritreans homeless and on the run.24 The Derg launched a land offensive in June 1978, with the Soviet and Cuban role confined to general planning and advice. Several factors made mid-1978 ideal for the Derg government to launch its offensive. The Derg’s repressive measures had silenced a formidable civilian opposition within the cities. An Organization of African Unity (OAU) Adhoc Committee had helped resolve Ethiopia's differences with the Sudan. Most importantly, the Somali Republic’s threat to Ethiopia’s territory had just been repelled: the Derg was seen as the defender of the “motherland” and the morale of Ethiopian troops was remarkably high. The Ethiopian military had grown substantially and was armed to the teeth with sophisticated Soviet weapons. In 1977–1978 alone, the Ethiopian army increased by 201 percent to 131,334 men, and in 1978–1979 it grew by another 70 percent to reach 206,117 strong.25 In addition, Cuban troops were fully engaged in defending Ethiopia, training Ethiopian troops and, according to some sources, were even dispatched to Eritrea.26 Soviet weaponry delivered to Ethiopia was moved to Eritrea, including BM-21 Katyusha rocket launchers, BTR60 and 152 armored personnel carriers, 23. Eddie Beckler, “Report on Eritrea 1869-1991” (Center for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason University, n.d.) See the reports on the series of the peace talks held in Berlin in 1978 in Halliday and Molyneux, Ethiopian Revolution, 173; René Leffort, Ethiopia: An Heretical Revolution? Trans. A. M. Barret (London: Zed Press, 1983), 265-266. 24. Haggai Erlich, The Struggle Over Eritrea, 1962-1978: War and Revolution in the Horn of Africa (Stanford, Cal.: Hoover Institution Press, 1983), 113-114; Eritrean sources give the final number of displaced Eritreans at 100,000 people and state that the EPLF took it upon itself to take care of them. 25. Zemecha-733, “Ke 1967-1982 Megabit dres Yetesera YeHayle Ghembata” (“Recruitment of Forces Conducted from 1967 until March 1982”), 18-10-82 (EC), p. 5. 26. Cuban officials insist that no Cuban troops ever set foot in Eritrea (interview, Mr. Miriano Lores Betancourt, Cuban Chargé d’affaires to Ethiopia, October 10, 1997, Addis Ababa). RDC/EPLF/His/Ar/St/CR, “Decisions of the 4th regular meeting of the Central Committee of the EPLF,” October 22, 1978, p. 18; the EPLF acknowledged the increased direct intervention of the Soviet Union and Cuba and called upon those countries to stop their activities. Higher officers in the Eritrean army are categorical about the Cuban presence in Eritrea. Col. Asmelash Gebremesqel (interview, February 9, 1998, Asmara), for instance, says that 1,600 Cuban soldiers were active in Eritrea. But to Minister Uqbe Abraha (interview, Asmara, 31 January 1998), what the Cubans were doing in Ethiopia was more important than their presence in Eritrea as it relieved tens of thousands of Ethiopian troops from service in eastern Ethiopia and made them available for operations in Eritrea, while the Cubans helped to train even more troops. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1237 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL T-series tanks and long-range artillery pieces. Moreover, MIG-21 fighter jets and MIG-23 ground attack fighters were on their way.27 In line with the unprecedented increase in manpower and matériel, the army that was to battle the Eritrean liberation movement was organizationally restructured into Task Forces 501 to 507. With a total of nearly 120,000 men, this army consisted of thirty-eight infantry brigades, six mechanized brigades, ten artillery battalions and the Air Force and the Navy.28 The Ethiopian army’s military strategy was to carry out a sweeping, double envelopment of the Eritrean liberation movements, then divide their forces into smaller segments. Radiating from the Eritrean capital, Asmara, additional single and double envelopments of each segment would follow, with the goal of stifling the Eritrean forces to the point of surrender or pounding them until total defeat.29 Consequently, the Ethiopian army made frontal, flank, secondary and piecemeal attacks against Eritrean positions. In the Eritrean camp, the balance began to tilt in favor of the EPLF against the ELF. A battle-hardened, politically restive group of about 1,000 fighters, commonly known as Falul (literally “anarchists”), split from the ELF and joined the EPLF in 1977.30 Eritrean youth flocked to the EPLF in such numbers that the Front had to send home those it deemed too young. By contrast, the ELF had been obliged to resort to forced conscription. Around 1977, both the ELF and the EPLF had organized their forces into brigades and each front had about 10 brigades, each consisting of about 1,100 to 1,300 men and women.31 During its First National Congress in 1971, the ELF recognized that its forces were not structured the way a liberation army should be. To remedy this, it planned to divide its armed wing, the Eritrean Liberation Army (ELA), in two: a permanent army stationed in liberated areas that would conduct hit-and-run attacks, and a mobile army made up of small units operating within the occupied territories to wage guerrilla warfare. The ELF also decided to establish stations in its liberated areas and to make one of these stations its central base.32 After 1977, the ELF abandoned its strategy of liberating the Eritrean countryside first and the towns later for one focusing on a tight defense of the Eritrean-Ethiopian border against a fresh influx of Ethiopian troops.33 27. Mesfin Gabriel, “Ethiopia promises ‘the year of the offensive’,” New African (February 1978): 23. 28. Zemecha-771, “Ateqalay YeAsir Amet YeZemecha Riport” September 1984 EC (“A Comprehensive Ten-Year Campaign Report”), 1984 (EC) p. 9; Interview with Col. Yacob Tekhleab (Asmara, August 28, 1997); Interview with Col. Asmelash, op. cit. 29. Zemecha-771, p. 10. A closer look at the Ethiopian army’s campaign report gives the picture. 30. Ibid., Tesfatsion, pp. 62-63. 31. Interviews with Col. Asmelash; Col. Yacob Tekhleab (Asmara, August 28, 1997); Yohannes Tesfaselassie (Asmara, September 10, 1997 and January 28, 1998). 32. RDC/His/ELF/3, “Qedamay Hagherawi Guba'e Tegadlo Harenet Ertra, Wetehaderawi Medeb Iyo” (“First National Congress of the ELF. Military Work Plan”), November 12, 1971. 33. Correspondence, Tesfay Tekhle (Keren, January 1999). 1238 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Impressive as it looked, however, this proved to be an unrealistic strategy. Throughout its history, the ELF lacked a coherent and realistic strategic program and fixed central base, which cost it dearly.34 Worse yet, the ELF grossly miscalculated the significance of Ethiopia's realignment: it misguidedly continued to regard the Soviet Union as a strategic ally and its intervention in Ethiopia as part of the struggle against imperialism.35 In contrast to the ELF, the EPLF contended that a protracted people’s war was the only way to victory and set out to “step-by-step liberate the land and the masses.”36 EPLF’s top military architect, Ibrahim Afa, had gone to Cuba in the EPLF Vice-Secretary General Isaias mid-1960s for training in line with Cuba’s Afwerki in the late 1970s: “When I am revolutionary war. Other leaders read a challenged, I become stubborn.” [Courtesy wide range of material on revolutionary of Dan Connell] warfare. Perhaps even more significant was the extended training that Romedan Mohammed-Nur and Isaias Afwerki received in China at the height of the Cultural Revolution in the second half of the 1960s. Of the five ELF political commissars who were sent to China for training, Romedan and Isaias were the ones who showed a keen interest in the Chinese revolutionary experience and sought to acquire the techniques to apply it in Eritrea in a bid to reform the defunct ELF.37 At the heart of their reformist efforts was the consummation of the idea of many reformers that a core group was needed to transform the Eritrean struggle into a revolutionary movement. As the ELF fractured in the face of a reformist avalanche, Romedan and Isaias remained true to their Maoist teachings. The two “talked amongst themselves [and]… came to an agreement, more or less, that they should form this core group.”38 On April 4, 1971, about a dozen members from 34. Interview with Governor Ibrahim Idris Totil (Massawa, February 4, 1998). 35. While all ELF informants including Ibrahim Idris Totil admit that the ELF lacked the political maturity to correctly appraise Ethiopia's realignment, Zemhret Yohannes recalls how such a contradictory stand disoriented the ranks and cadres of the organization. 36. Although this was the slogan of the EPLF’s First Organizational Congress in 1977 when it also adopted it as its liberation strategy, the organization had been practicing it as early as the mid-1970s when it started to liberate the countryside. 37. Haile “Deru’e” Weld’etensae in Dan Connell, Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 2005),42-47; Interview with Romedan Mohammed-Nur (September 25, 2005). 38. Mahmoud Sherifo in Connell, Conversations, 74-75. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1239 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL the two splinter groups met in Gedem to launch what became the clandestine Eritrean People’s Revolutionary Party39 (EPRP, also called the People’s Party) to run the EPLF from behind the scenes. As Alamin Mohammed-Seid put it, “every thing that the EPLF did was decided by the party before hand!”40 Unbeknownst to the rest of the fighters, the People’s Party deployed its functionaries down to the smallest units of the EPLF and controlled the latter through this clandestine chain of command. It reinforced the commitment of fighters to EPLF’s goals and methods, and also imposed a strict regime of discipline through open processes of criticism-self-criticism. Infrequently, harsher measures were brought to bear in pursuit of internal security.41 The EPLF’s Revolutionary Guard, or Halewa Sewra as it was locally called, for example, had an inward looking branch specialized in ensuring that all fighters were in line with the security, disciplinary and ideological standards of the organization.42 Led by the secret People’s Party, therefore, the nascent EPLF quickly evolved into a highly politicized and disciplined military organization jointly led by militarily adept political figures and politically conscious military commanders. The cumulative result was that the EPLF showed remarkably better understanding 39. Ibid., 75. These were: Isaias Afwerki, Romedan Mohammed-Nur, Mahmoud Sherifo, Mesfen Hagos, Mohammed Ali Omaro, Abu-Bakr Mohammed Hassan, Ibrahim Afa, Hassan Mohammed Amir, Ali Said Abdellah, Ahmed Tahir Baduri, and Ahmed Al-Qeisi. According to Connell, although Haile “Deru’e” Weld’etensae and Alamin Mohammed Seid did not attend this meeting, they belonged to the founding core and went on to play major roles as they jointly controlled the political wing of both the clandestine People’s Party and the Front, i.e. EPLF. The EPLF Politburo constituted the secret party’s central committee and each of these individuals was in charge of one of the EPLF’s specialized branches. Although circumstantial evidence indicates that, as party functionaries, EPLF political commissars were not deployed beyond the company level, the party recruited and/or planted its members in the smallest units of the EPLF. 40. Interview with Alamin Mohammed Seid (September 28, 2005, Asmara). While none of its former leaders have qualms about its existence, Alamin Mohammed Seid explains that the hostile political environment that gave birth to the EPLF demanded the secrecy of its core in order to ensure EPLF’s survival in the short term and advance the broader national interest in the long term. To this day, however, the inner workings of the People’s Party remain a closely guarded secret. Dan Connell is the only scholar who has written about its origins based on firsthand accounts of the party’s founders and leaders. See “Inside the EPLF: the Origins of the ‘People’s Party’ and its Role in the Liberation of Eritrea” in Review of African Political Economy, (September 2001), reprinted in Connell, Building a New Nation: Collected Articles on the Eritrean Revolution (1983-2002), Vol. 2 (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 2004), 898-924. His account is largely drawn from his interviews with Haile Weld’etensae and a corroborating interview with Mahmoud Sherifo, both of which have also been published in his Conversations with Eritrean Political Prisoners (see notes 38-40 above). 41. It is believed that the EPRP’s strict and methodical secrecy enabled the EPLF to avoid the distracting Guevarist bravado of the ELF and its 1973 internal populist opposition. 42. RDC/Security/01: 05275, EPLF Revolutionary Guard, “Nay 8 Amet Politikawi Tsebtsab Kifli” (“Eight-year Political Report”), Undated. 1240 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 and more efficient implementation of conventional and non-conventional warfare, accompanied by adherence to strict discipline. Believing that a strong enemy could gradually be defeated in a people’s war, the EPLF implemented the Maoist doctrine of warfare, which included guerrilla and mobile warfare techniques alongside conventional positional war.43 In order not to repeat the mistakes of the ELF, the EPLF aimed to raise consciousness, to politicize and arm the masses, and it worked to inject its doctrines into the public from the outset. In terms of establishing a fixed rear base, the EPLF had since its inception decided that Sahel would be its base because of its impregnable mountains as well as its distance from Ethiopia and proximity to Sudan and the Red Sea (supply and escape routes). Moreover, cognizant of Ethiopia's realignment and its bearing on the Eritrean struggle, the EPLF opposed Soviet interference in Ethiopia against Somalia and later called upon the Soviet Union and its satellites to refrain from interfering in the Eritrean struggle.44 On the eve of the Ethiopian offensives of June 1978, ELF and EPLF planning differed despite their initial move to slow down the Ethiopian army’s advance before it crossed into Eritrea. Tactically, both managed to hold off Ethiopian forces for over a week, the ELF around Mereb and the EPLF around GherhuSirnai. However, the differences between the two organizations far outweigh any similarities. Typically haphazard and vacillating, the ELF decided to confront advancing Ethiopian forces and then take measures as the situation unfolded.45 The EPLF, on the other hand, predicted an inevitable, massive setback.46 Politburo member Uqbe Abraha affirms that the EPLF knew what would come after Ogaden, and that its leadership was morally prepared for withdrawal. During this time, the EPLF started teaching its fighters about the Chinese Long March and other similar experiences of withdrawals. Tenaciously holding to its belief that its cause was righteous, the Eritrean leadership readied itself for any eventuality by reminding its ranks and civilian base that a people's war was not a smooth ride. This Eritrean conviction was matched by the Ethiopian government's determination to end the Eritrean problem once and for all, and also by the 43. RDC/Hist.Ar.St./09: 06434, EPLF “Seminar Paper # 18: Three Stages of Protracted War,” Undated; RDC/EPLF/His/Mili:3, “Strategiawi Mizlaq” (“Strategic Withdrawal”), ND, p. 9. The EPLF held its first Congress in 1977 when it officially embraced its improvised strategy. 44. RDC/EPLF/His/Ar/St/CR, “Wesanetat Rabe'ay Mudub Akheba Maekelay Shmaghele Hizbawi Ghenbar Harenet Ertra” (“Decisions of the 4th regular meeting of the Central Committee of the EPLF,”) October 22, 1978, p. 18. 45. Interview, Governor Totil. 46. The foresight and leadership of the clandestine party within the EPLF spared it the vacillation of the ELF and insured the implementation of its decisions despite some resistance from the grassroots. Through its courses at the Cadre School and publication of materials on other similar experiences, the EPLF had prepared some of the fighters for withdrawal and softened the resistance to it among others. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1241 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL Ethiopian popular belief that nothing could be more righteous than defending the “unity of the motherland.” With the new huge influx of arms and large numbers of volunteers and conscripts trained en masse, the Ethiopian military boasted that its victory against Somalia in the East would be repeated in the North. Ethiopian Commander-in-Chief Col. Mengistu was so confident of a quick military knockout that he denied the existence of a problem in Eritrea.47 When the Eritrean defenders began to suffer massive setbacks, as predicted, the world began to echo Mengistu's assertions. Scholarly presuppositions that the outcome of the fight was a foregone conclusion were garbed in nuanced analysis of Ethiopia as an organic whole that Eritrea was incapable of breaking away from. Nor, from this point of view, could Eritrea exist separated from Ethiopia. Through millennia-long interaction and sharing of tradition in “a vast ecological area and historical arena” called “Greater Ethiopia”, these kindred inhabitants were said to have formed a singular, organic unit.48 Arguing from within this context, Christopher Clapham categorized the Eritrean Independence War as just another secession movement resulting from “age-old tensions between center and periphery in the Ethiopian state.”49 According to this master-narrative, Eritreans resorted to armed struggle because military-diplomatic support from neighboring countries made it possible. Dismissing Eritrean nationalism altogether, Haggai Erlich similarly stated that “Eritrea is not a natural unit”50 and blamed Ethiopian mistreatment for Eritreans’ rising up in arms.51 Such perspectives implied that no group had managed to break away from Greater Ethiopia, and neither would the Eritreans. Writing after the Eritrean nationalists had survived the gigantic Ethiopian offensives of the late 1970s, Haggai Erlich ruled out Eritrean victory as a distant possibility: “The chance of those identified with Eritrean nationalism achieving it by military victory over the Ethiopian armed forces seems very remote.”52 Meanwhile, inside Eritrea, the Ethiopian military command declared nationalist insurgents crushed at the end of each offensiveonly to launch another shortly afterwards with the promise of annihilating them once and for all. Paul 47. RDC/Mengistu 3A/78, “Mengistu's Speech on the Fourth Anniversary of the Revolution,” 12 September 1978, Addis Ababa. 48. Donald N. Levine, Greater Ethiopia: The Evolution of a Multiethnic Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 26. In a preface to the second edition of this book in 2000, Levine persists in his advocacy of a Greater Ethiopia and hardly mentions that Eritrean independence had defied his earlier view of Ethiopia as an organic unit. Moreover, according to Levine and later Ethiopianists like Paul Henze, in Layers of Time: A History of Ethiopia (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), Eritrea constituted the core of this supposedly organic body politic. The irony of a centrifugal core and a centripetal periphery seems to have eluded these writers. 49. Clapham, Transformation and Continuity, 207. 50. Erlich, Struggle Over Eritrea, 119. 51. Erlich, Ethiopia and the Challenge of Independence (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1986), 213; Erlich, Struggle Over Eritrea, 119. 52. Ibid. 1242 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Henze compared this phenomenon to “a drama that gets stuck in the third act and repeats itself over and over again.” He accurately observed that regular “‘final’ offensives failed to dislodge the insurgents.”53 Like the other Ethiopianists, however, he dismissed the home-grown resilience of the Eritrean insurgency by insisting that it was sustained by foreign powers: Eritrea was a more difficult problem for Haile Selassie’s government. It was also a greater challenge for the Soviets…. The insurgency had some local basis…but [the Eritreans] were never able to agree among themselves on their objectives…[or to form a majority] for any positive political purpose. Without external support, Eritrean difficulties would probably have been quite containable for Ethiopia, but by 1969 Cuba, Communist China, several East European countries and radical Arab states friendly to the USSR were active supporting the rebel movement.54 Henze failed to adequately explain continued escalation of the Eritrean Independence War after Emperor Haile Selassie struck deals with China and Sudan in 1971-1972, or after the Eastern Bloc jumped in to rescue the Derg junta and resolve the Eritrean question by force of arms. According to Henze, during the Soviet- and Cuban-supported 1978 Ethiopian offensives, the Ethiopian government failed “to overcome the widespread apathy of the Eritrean population toward its rule.” He also argued that Sudan resumed its support for the insurgents, who had started to receive “substantial monetary and military support from conservative Arab governments.”55 Nonetheless, like the aforementioned Ethiopianists, Henze made little (if any) factual and analytical contribution toward explaining EPLF’s survival in this period and its eventual victory thirteen years later, contributions this article seeks to establish. At the height of the Ethiopian offensives and Eritrean withdrawals, David Pool observed that the realignment of forces in the Horn of Africa worked against the Eritreans yet again. Repeated manipulation by superpowers left the Eritreans with no option other than persevering and asserting their right by force. Accordingly, the Eritrean people sustained the insurgency far beyond mere apathy toward the Derg government. They actively supported the insurgents. Pool thus concluded: “Mass popular support and the determination of the Eritrean population and liberation movement ensure that whatever the support for Ethiopia and sufferings inflicted on the Eritreans, the struggle will go on.”56 Pool analyzed how early in its existence, in 1973, the EPLF quashed internal populist challengers but took their 53. Paul Henze, “Eritrea: The Endless War,” The Washington Quarterly (March 1986): 2336. 54. Henze, “Flexible Persistence over Four Decades: The USSR and the Horn of Africa”(1987), 5-6. Unpublished paper presented at the “Conference on Protracted Warfare” at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts; available in the Thomas Kane Collection of the Library of Congress. 55. Henze, “Flexible Persistence,” p. 16. 56. David Pool, Eritrea: Africa’s Longest War (London: Anti-Slavery Society, 1982), 55. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1243 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL EPLF political chief Haile “Deru’e” Weld’etensae in the late 1970s: “This is our ‘Long March’!” [Courtesy of Dan Connell] criticisms to heart in devising mechanisms to channel Eritreans’ collective energies toward the common goal of independence. The EPLF put in place and ran efficient administrative, politico-ideological and military-intelligence structures that enforced organizational cohesion and pursued national unity while acknowledging and accommodating diversity at the grassroots.57 Accordingly, the state-like structures of the EPLF ensured its survival against all odds and its eventual triumph over the far superior Ethiopian military. As the war for independence continued with spiraling ferocity, intrepid scholars and journalists, who risked their lives to travel to the Eritrean combatants’ rear base and to the frontlines, thought differently from Ethiopian commanders and Ethiopianist scholars. Although the world turned a deaf ear to them, these commentators who went to the field were convinced that predictions of the defeat of Eritrean organizations, and of the EPLF in particular, were farfetched. French journalist Christian Sabatier was an eyewitness to the Withdrawal and insisted in March 1979 that “the EPLF is intact and the morale of the fighters is high.”58 Richard Sherman made a far-reaching structural analysis of the Eritrean insurgents (particularly the EPLF). He similarly concluded that with ”their discipline and organization there seems to be little or no chance of them crumbling in the face of a massive [Ethiopian] counter-offensive.” According to Sherman, “in the long run, the Eritreans seem capable of militarily defeating the Ethiopian armed forces, even with the massive Soviet hardware build up.”59 57. Pool, From Guerrillas to Government: The Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (Oxford: James Currey, 2001),76-82. 58. Christian Sabatier in Eritrea Now (March 1978): 9-11. 59. Richard F. Sherman, “Eritrea in Revolution” (Unpublished Ph.D. diss., Brandeis University, 1980), 163. 1244 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Dan Connell is the foreigner who has published the most on the Eritrean struggle, with extensive coverage of all major landmarks of the Eritrean Independence War since the mid-1970s. He witnessed the EPLF withdrawal northwards from major towns and reported that in addition to the military weapons that the EPLA (the armed wing of the EPLF) had captured, its human losses were compensated for by the massive influx of young Eritreans who rushed to volunteer. Although he recognized the EPLA's inability to face the Ethiopians in conventional, open warfare, he did not doubt its ultimate victory: Five visits to Eritrea over the past three years, including a monthlong tour of the EPLF controlled areas that coincided with the latest round of fighting [Second Round Offensive, November 1978], lead me to conclude that Eritrean predictions of eventual . . . victory are justified.60 The EPLF had just finished “erasing all traces of its shadow republic prior to the final departure” from Keren, when Connell and EPLF political chief Haile Weld’etensae withdrew in one of the last vehicles to exit the strategic town. As they got on the truck, Haile assured Connell: “this is our ‘Long March’.”61 The Campaign to Repeat Victory In early June 1978, the Chairman of the Ethiopian Provisional Military Administrative Council (PMAC), Lt. Col. Mengistu Hailemariam, who was also the Commander-in-Chief of the Ethiopian Armed Forces and Chairman of the Campaigns Council, gave a direct order to the Second Division Command to start the offensive on June 8, 1978. His orders also prescribed the army’s advance.62 The six routes were: 1. 501st Task Force: Gonder–Humera–Omhajar (in Eritrea)–Tessenei. 2. 502nd Task Force: Shire Enda Selassie–Shambiqo (in Eritrea)–Barentu– Aqordat–Keren 3. 503rd Task Force was to move in three directions -"A"63 Sub-Task Force from Adigrat–Enticho–Adwa–Mereb–Mendefera– Asmara. -"B" Sub-Task Force from Enticho–Tsorona (in Eritrea)–Deqemhare– Asmara. - "C" Sub-Task Force from Adi-Qeyeh–Deqemhare–Asmara. 4. 505th Task Force: Massawa–Asmara 60. Dan Connell, “The Changing Situation in Eritrea,” in Behind the War in Eritrea, pp. 55-59. 61. Dan Connell, Against All Odds: A Chronicle of the Eritrean Revolution (Trenton, N.J.: Red Sea Press, 1993), 172. 62. Zemecha-771, p. 10. 63. The Sub-Task Forces were identified with Geez alphabets and the first letter “Ha” is replaced by “A”, the second “Le” with “B” and the third “He” with “C”. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1245 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL 5. 506th Task Force, which would mobilize before the 505th in four directions from Asmara: Asmara–Massawa, Asmara–Deqemhare, Asmara–Mendefera and Asmara–Keren. 6. 507th Task Force: Barentu–Shambiqo However, as rebel resistance delayed the Ethiopian forces’ advance into Eritrea, it became clear that Ethiopia's triumphant offensive on the Ogaden Front could not be repeated in Eritrea. The Ethiopian army resorted to launching several offensives. The First Round Offensive Once the long-awaited Ethiopian offensive started on June 13, 1978, Chairman Mengistu closely watched its progress from controlling stations at Addis Ababa, Gonder, Meqelle, and Asmara. Sometimes he even went to the battlefronts to observe and control the operations directly.64 Ethiopian forces claimed that they had “crushed” and “destroyed” the Eritrean fighters, whereas the EPLF claimed that it withdrew from one place to another only when the strategic significance of holding that place was gone. But each side tacitly gave credit to the other. The EPLF appreciated the overwhelming military superiority of the advancing Ethiopian army vis-à-vis its own. Although they did not give the EPLA credit in their reports, Ethiopian commanders, in a tacit admission of EPLA’s strength, concentrated their forces against the EPLA.65 Interestingly, however, the EPLF commonly announced that it was scoring victories over the Ethiopian army, challenging the conventional wisdom on victory and defeat. 64. Zemecha-771, 10. 65. Ethiopian attention focused on the EPLA while the ELF was in the southern highlands and not too far from the highway. ELF leader Totil recognizes that the EPLA was an able army suited to all kinds of fighting regardless of weather and time. 1246 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 The ELA fought the advancing Ethiopian army in three of the five theatres of operation. On the Humera–Omhajar front, Ethiopian forces easily overcame ELA resistance, occupying the Eritrean border town of Omhajar on June 17, 1978. Less than two weeks later, the second unit of the Ethiopian army broke through ELA defenses on Mereb–Shambiqo, lifted the siege on Barentu and liberated the besieged Ethiopian forces in that town.66 Albeit brief and ultimately futile, the ELA offered its boldest resistance against the Ethiopian forces on the Mereb-Adi-Khwala Front.67 Eight ELA battalions of the 72nd, 75th and 77th Brigades crossed into Tigray where they momentarily halted the Ethiopians by effectively intercepting the advance units of the 503rd "A" Sub-Task Force. But whereas the Ethiopians were continuously reinforced, the ELA lacked reinforcement. Moreover, the ELF was busy with its internal political troubles. The Ethiopian forces, therefore, not only regained their captured tanks but also pushed back the ELA. After Mereb, the ELF was engaged in no significant action. When the ELF vacated the major towns and the highway, the Ethiopian army marched to Asmara.68 EPLF's army, the EPLA, encountered the Ethiopian army on two major frontlines—at Gherhu-Sirnai–Adi-Qeyeh and at Massawa–Dogoli. In Tigray province in northern Ethiopia, EPLA units along with their counterparts of the TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front, a northern Ethiopian rebel movement), effectively halted the advance of Ethiopian troops into Eritrea. Simultaneous Ethiopian attempts at breaking the siege on the town of Adi-Qeyeh failed. EPLA positions outside Massawa and along the road to Asmara deprived the Ethiopian army of full control of the port city and cut it off from overland communication with the Eritrean capital.69 66. Zemecha-771, pp. 10-11. 67. The 503rd Task Force was divided into three Sub-Task Forces, “A”, “B” and “C”, which attacked from different positions. The first two started from Adigrat on June 8, 1978 and diverged at Enticho. The “A” Sub-Task Force then proceeded to Adwa and it was from there that it launched its offensive. Zemecha-771, pp. 10,11. 68. All of my ELF interviewees are unanimous about this. While some ELF cadres attribute the failure to the power struggle between ELF administrator Wolde Dawit and Seid Saleh (the strong commander of ELA’s 77th Brigade), Zemhret Yohannes dismisses that claim, saying that both Seid and Wolde were soldiers who had similar, if not equal, understanding of what was unfolding. He argues, instead, that the ELF in general did not take the battles seriously. While in the midst of combat the Ethiopian forces visibly were being reinforced and the ELA was running out of supplies, he upholds, truckloads of ammunition were sitting idly in Barka. On the other hand, as a young truck driver with the ELF's transportation department, Tekle Abraha recalls how all the trucks that were loaded with ammunition and weapons to reinforce the embattled ELA units on the Mereb–Adi-Khwala front could not move because of heavy rains and bad roads. Conversations with Ato Tekle Abraha (Los Angeles, Calif.) 69. EPLF/His/Mili.:1, “Press Release”, 31st August 1978; Interview with Col. Yacob. The fall of parts of Massawa to the EPLA was short-lived because EPLA's attempted advances were effectively checked by long-range bombardments from Yemeni and Soviet warships. Erlich, Struggle over Eritrea,110; Beckler, “Report on Eritrea,” 42. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1247 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL After the resolution of the Ogaden crisis in Somalia, the triumphant 10th Brigade was flown to Massawa to join the besieged Ethiopian 505th Task Force. Replenished, Ethiopian forces gathered strength to break the siege, forcing the EPLA to pull back on July 13, 1978, after sustaining severe casualties.70 In addition to the above five fronts, the outskirts of Asmara became another bloody inferno during the June 1978 offensive, in a battle between the besieged 506th Task Force on the one hand and the ELA and EPLA on the other. The EPLA held its positions to the east, north and northwest of Asmara, and a fresh arrival of EPLA units from southern Eritrea held back the Ethiopian units that had penetrated through ELA defenses around Meqerka, on the southwestern outskirts of Asmara.71 The End of the ELF Factor The exact losses of the two sides in all theaters of operation are as of yet unknown. However, one lasting outcome of the Ethiopian offensive was the end of ELF’s significance as a player in the Eritrean struggle. Lack of internal ideological-political cohesion, infighting among leaders, discord within the rankand-file, and the absence of an effective military strategy irreparably damaged the ELF in the face of a superior foe. Its forces were continuously pushed back until the entire organization retired to northwestern Eritrea, in northern Barka.72 ELF internal weaknesses compounded—and were compounded by—the objective disadvantage the ELF faced in combating Ethiopian forces in three theatres of operations. Western Eritrea, in contrast to the rugged terrain of southern Eritrea, was difficult for any force to defend. The vast, open landscapes of western Eritrea made the number of troops and their armament crucial in determining the outcome of battle. The Ethiopians absolutely outnumbered and out-gunned the ELA, which had not fully developed trench warfare tactics that might have been better suited for defense. Lack of political leadership capable of strategic thinking under pressure and a set of ugly developments held back the ELA from taking drastic measures. The ELF undermined its own capacity by arresting one of its most capable and senior military commanders in western Eritrea, Mohammed Osman Ezaz, and stripping him of his authority.73 Abraham Tekle, the awe-inspiring chief of ELF's clandestine hit squad in Asmara (Fedayin), arrived on the Humera–Omhajar Front to take command. He briefly coordinated 70. Zemecha-771, p. 11. It is believed that the EPLF leadership quietly banned “Salina,” the song of the legendary Eritrean revolutionary vocalist, Tekleab Kiflemariam “Wedi Tukul,” for its vivid depiction of this battle and the negative repercussions it had on the morale of its ranks. Even when it was deemed safe to play it in the late 1980s, the song had been significantly trimmed in length and content. 71. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Me'ebaletat Hizbawi Ghinbar Harenet Ertra Kab Kefla 78-1985 Werarat” (Developments of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front from the Offensives of mid1975-1985), n.d., p. 1. 72. Ibid. 73. Interview with Mohammed Osman Ezaz (September 3, 2005, Tessenei, Eritrea). 1248 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 the ELA and staged a herculean resistance in the open fields between Geluj and Omhajar before he was killed in battle, devastating the morale of his forces. Meanwhile, after failing to fully repulse the Ethiopian forces in Mereb, the ELA occupied positions on the high ground of Kesad-Iqa that put it in command of the Ethiopian army's only passage into Eritrea. The ELF overestimated its power and misjudged the Ethiopian army, thinking that it had weakened it before crossing the Mereb River. Closely watching the developments, EPLF military chief Ibrahim Afa proposed to his ELF counterpart, Melake Tekle, the formation of a joint line of defense to better check Ethiopian pressure. But before taking any tangible measures, both were taken by surprise and the front at Kesad-Iqa was suddenly broken. The ELF then rushed to make a smooth withdrawal from the towns.74 Neither making a concerted effort to impede the Ethiopian advance nor devising a long-term plan to outlast the offensive, the ELF now turned its attention to liquidating a rival Eritrean organization. Having signed a unity agreement with the ELF in Khartoum in 1976 and split from the EPLF immediately afterwards, Osman Saleh Sabbe’s ELF-Popular Liberation Forces (ELF-PLF) was allowed to operate in ELF bases in northern Barka. But in 1978, threatened by ELF-PLF influence over ELF ranks and the civilian population, the latter turned against the former. ELF-PLF fighters at Hash-Hash, Tegeileb and other camps came under ELF attack. The liquidation campaign lasted from August 1978 to May 1979 and was carried on as far as Hashenit, deep inside Sudan.75 Onset of EPLF Withdrawals ELF's quick withdrawal from the western lowlands and its tenuous presence in southwestern and western Eritrea did not augur well for the EPLF. It put EPLF's position in southern Eritrea at a strategic disadvantage and simultaneously threatened its access to its rear base through Senhit province. Because of the historic rivalry between the two organizations, betrayal could not be discounted. Nonetheless, no sources suggest that the ELF deliberately retired from fighting in order to harm the EPLF. With the ELF unable to slow down the Ethiopian advance, the Ethiopian army marched towards the strategic town of Keren on the mountain range connecting the southern and central Eritrean highlands to EPLA’s rear base 74. Totil, ELF's political chief at the time, believes that a joint defense would probably have delayed the Ethiopian advance, but not stopped it. Moreover, such a joint undertaking would have prolonged the hostilities along a single line, increasing the losses on the Eritrean side without significantly altering the outcome or the overall balance of power. 75. Interviews with Mussie and Zemhret Yohannes suggest that the reason was because the PLF-FM started to win support among the ELA rank-and-file and the people in the ELF base area, thus threatening the leadership of the ELF. But Totil says that it was because the existence of this group in ELF territories was contradictory to an agreement already signed between the ELF and EPLF. EPLF had long dismissed this veteran Eritrean patriot’s faction as “reactionary.” MILITARY HISTORY ( 1249 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL EPLF fighter on the lookout outside his foxhole in the northern outskirts of Asmara just before the Withdrawal [Courtesy of Dan Connell] in the northern highlands. The Ethiopian advance in western Eritrea therefore jeopardized the town’s safety and raised the possibility of Ethiopian entry into EPLA’s base before it could pull back. Moreover, as the EPLF's main base in northern Eritrea was barely defended against enemy intrusion from the coast, the possibility of the fall of Keren on the western side risked cutting off the EPLA and splitting it up into several small encircled segments, which was the objective of the Ethiopian military. In the face of this danger, in line with the Fabian principle of nibbling a superior foe on the edges before pulverizing its core,76 the EPLA avoided prolonged confrontations with the enemy. Thus began the Eritrean Long March toward Nakfa whose impregnable mountainous terrain had long been chosen as a rear base and the last line of defense. The EPLA aimed to conserve its energy while weakening the enemy. Accordingly, they engaged the Ethiopian troops at successive stages to the latter's tactical disadvantage.77 The EPLF withdrew first from southern Eritrea in late June 1978.78 At the same time, EPLA brigade commander Teklai Habteselassie 76. Carl Von Clausewitz, On War. Ed. and trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), 480-481. Although leftist revolutionaries attach politico-ideological significance to guerrilla warfare, Mao Zedong and Ernesto “Che” Guevara are in harmony with Clausewitz on the military essence of guerrilla warfare: Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare. Trans. Samuel B. Griffith (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961), 6-7, 42-44; Che Guevara, Guerrilla Warfare (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1961), 10-12. 77. Isaias Afwerki in Merih, February-March 1980, p. 7; Interview with Minister Uqbe. 78. Interview with Col. Yacob; Zemecha-771, p. 11. 1250 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 (currently Major General and commander of the Eritrean Air Force) led EPLA's expeditionary force to Mogolo to overcome the threat from the west. This force engaged the Ethiopian army in several locations and slowed its advance toward and recapture of Keren until the EPLF was able to evacuate the town. While its forces were pulling out of the southern towns, the EPLF instructed select members of its mass organizations to evacuate as well. A practice repeated several times, withdrawing of the prominent leaders of EPLF's mass organizations was meant to protect the movement's inner modus operandi and to spare individual leaders potential Ethiopian reprisals.79 Despite burdening the military wing at times, some of these civilians joined the ranks of the independence fighters, or served an even greater purpose in running a safe and secure support base for fighters. The civilian settlements behind EPLA lines gave the resistance movement a non-military, social face. Resourceful civilian communities flourished there, where children of independence fighters were looked after and educated at the Revolution School, wounded fighters recuperated, and where guerrilla fighters could recoup and socialize. The Revolution School eventually supplied the movement with its most trusted, highly dedicated and talented young men and women. The latter served and continue to serve in various capacities from personal aides and bodyguards of the leaders (including the President today), to highranking security chiefs and ministry directors, or officers in the fledgling Eritrean Air Force and elsewhere. Ending in late August 1978, the first Ethiopian offensive was successful in that a large part of Eritrea was restored to Ethiopian control. Nevertheless, Ethiopian successes carried inherent risks that Addis Ababa and its generals in Eritrea neglected at their own peril. First, the decline of its significance in the fight against Ethiopia foreshadowed the ELF’s retreat to the Eritrean-Sudanese border and eventual disintegration in face of an onslaught by the rival EPLF. Ironically, confronting the mighty Ethiopian military alone came as a blessing in disguise to the EPLF. Without the ELF’s threat/rivalry and its attendant distractions, the EPLF could entirely devote its attention to overcoming the Ethiopian military in Eritrea. Second, the more Ethiopian forces penetrated into Eritrea, the thinner they stretched, and stretch they did into geographically and demographically unknown, hostile parts of Eritrea. By contrast, the more Eritreans withdrew, the more concentrated their forces became, and the narrower the theatres of operations. As will be shown below, these initial developments led to the reduced effectiveness 79. Giorgis Belay, who was one of many active members of EPLF's mass organizations in Deqemhare, was not selected to leave her town as were the other members instructed to join the withdrawing EPLA. She insisted that she should leave town with the fighters, who were her colleagues. She recalls how the EPLF cadre in charge had her locked up in a very cold room with no bed, mattress or blankets for an entire night for not following instructions. She left Deqemhare for her home village where she lived until she escaped to Sudan with her family. She now resides in Australia. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1251 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL of Ethiopian heavy weaponry and brought about relative equilibrium between Ethiopian and Eritrean forces deployed in each theatre of operation. The Second Round Offensive After the first offensive, Ethiopian forces could easily reach Asmara from the south. Although the city was connected to Massawa, Ethiopian access to the port city was prevented by a formidable EPLA presence along the Asmara–Massawa highway. The 505th Task Force temporarily failed to dislodge the EPLA from Dogoli, to the west of Massawa, and the EPLA's hold of the escarpment to the east of Asmara was still strong. Equally intact were EPLA's defenses around Embaderho and Adi-Yacob, to the north and northwest of Asmara respectively. Steadfast in their determination to solve the Eritrea question by force, Ethiopian leaders started to make new arrangements for a second round offensive. The number of Soviet advisors increased, taking charge not only of “drawing up military strategy based on detailed maps photographed by sophisticated equipment,”80 but also leading actual fighting from the ground and air. As the offensive was about to be launched, the highest-ranking Soviet generals in Ethiopia arrived in Asmara to take direct command of the giant operation. The Ethiopian army and air force were each put under one Soviet general.81 The offensive was launched on November 18, 1978. The EPLF charged that the Derg had deliberately launched its offensive during the Eritrean harvest season in order to starve civilians pursuant to the announced Ethiopian government policy of “draining the water to kill the fish.”82 The second offensive was fought in three locations, making a semicircle around Asmara (Northern, Western and Eastern Fronts), with the aim of ensuring the city's safety by pushing the Eritrean insurgents as far as possible. The insurgents, i.e. the EPLA (the ELF had by now retired to places of no strategic value to Ethiopian forces), were surprised as Ethiopian forces simultaneously struck all areas of confrontation with heavy fire. Fighting on the Northern Front, nearest to Asmara, lasted four days. The Ethiopian army simultaneously moved in all directions to break EPLA defenses but failed to wrest strategic positions from Eritrean control.83 Then on November 21, 1978, the Ethiopian command gathered its forces from all frontlines to the Western Front, where it severely damaged the EPLA. At Adi-Yacob, about 60 (sixty) Ethiopian tanks were unleashed on a narrow enclave thinly defended by a single EPLA battalion. The Eritrean guerrillas' resistance was no match for the mechanized thrust of the Ethiopian 80. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Important Statement.” 81. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Important Statement,” October 24, 1978. The EPLF repeated the same account a month later: EPLF/His/Mili:1, “Important Announcement, # 1,” November 25, 1978. 82. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Important Statement.” 83. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Me'ebaletat Hizbawi Ghinbar Harenet Ertra Kab Kefla 78-1985 Werarat”, p. 2. 1252 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 An Eritrean peasant looking at an unexploded Soviet bomb in the southern highland village of Filfil after EPLF's withdrawal [Courtesy of Dan Connell] army. The defending battalion was dispersed with some platoons captured in their entirety and others overrun by tanks in their trenches. The EPLA 8th Brigade Commander Omar Hassan Humed (Tewil), currently Major General and Chief of Staff of the Eritrean Ministry of Defense, narrowly escaped capture. He quickly regrouped survivors, who avoided capture by piercing through the Ethiopians’ encirclement and went off to engage in yet more fierce combat at Ilabered, east of Keren.84 Despite its astounding success, however, the Ethiopian army's attempt to surround the EPLA along the Asmara-Keren road faltered because EPLA units resisted until their defenses around Embaderho had been evacuated.85 Pursuing the EPLA, Ethiopian army units and their reinforcements converged at Ilabered, a small town on the eastern outskirts of Keren.86 In anticipation of an assault by the Ethiopian forces, the EPLA had taken commanding positions in the rugged terrain above the town, culminating in the decisive and bloody battle of Ilabered on November 25. The EPLA not only resisted the Ethiopian attempts at breaking through to Keren but also launched bold counter attacks.87 From the field, the embattled Ethiopian force reported to headquarters: [T]here was significant damage to personnel and materiel; there was nowhere to move to; the artillery weapons fell silent. Control became impossible; the number of injured greatly increased; blood flowed like water; when those who demanded first aid increased, those who could provide it decreased . . . 88 84. Interview with Major General Omar Hassan Humed (Tewil), Te'ateq, No. 3, June 2002, pp. 23, 24, 35. 85. Zemecha-553, “501gna ena 506gna Ghibre-Hayl Ateqalay Zegheba” (“501st and 506th Task Forces’ Comprehensive Report”) ND, pp. 1-2. 86. Ibid., pp. 2-3. 87. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Me'ebaletat Hizbawi Ghinbar Harenet Ertra Kab Kefla 78-1985 Werarat,” p. 2. 88. Zemecha-553, “501gna ena 506gna Ghibre-Hayl Ateqalay Zegheba,” p. 3. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1253 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL Meanwhile, in Western Eritrea the Ethiopian army exerted pressure on the EPLA along the Aqordat–Keren road and from the harsh terrain around Mensura, directly south of Keren. Unable to ward off these simultaneous attacks separately, the EPLA pulled back closer to Keren where it could engage the two waves of Ethiopian units beyond their merging point. They were successful, and Keren temporarily remained out of Ethiopian control. Ethiopian successes in eastern Eritrea along the Red Sea coast, however, had immediate and far-reaching consequences. After three unrelenting days of fighting in July, Ethiopian forces around Massawa dislodged the EPLA from Dogoli along the Massawa–Asmara highway. As some of these successful Ethiopian units marched northwards along the Red Sea, engagements ensued in quick succession. Ethiopian forces tried to turn northwest into the hinterland and blockade the EPLA north of Keren, along the Keren–Afabet road. Although the EPLA checked the momentum of the Ethiopian army just short of accomplishing that task, other Ethiopian units moving along the coast had a free hand to close in on the EPLF rear base from the east.89 EPLA’s sparse defenses in the northeastern interiorfacing the Red Searaised the specter of Ethiopian penetration into the EPLF rear base and rendered the defense of Keren redundant. Despite its success in foiling the seemingly tireless Ethiopian advances toward Keren, the EPLA had to pull out of the city and abandon its positions at Ilabered.90 While skirmishes continued on the harsh escarpments outside of Keren, the EPLF completed evacuating the city, stripping it of everything portable that the Front could use at its rear base. School children flocked to the EPLF rear base en masse, carrying school supplies and furniture on their backs.91 Once its civilian and political branches were safely out of Keren, the EPLF pulled its forces from their trenches at Ilabered under the cover of darkness. Unaware of this retreat, Ethiopian forces started pounding the empty defenses in the early hours of the morning. Anxious that their barrage had failed to initiate a counter-bombardment, the on-site Ethiopian command dispatched a reconnaissance team to investigate the silence across the line. The team could not find any trace of human activity. That the EPLA seemed to disappear into thin air was nerve-wracking to the team, 89. Zemecha-771, p.13; EPLF/His/Mili:1, “Me'ebaletat Hizbawi Ghinbar Harenet Ertra Kab Kefla 78-1985 Werarat,” p. 2.; Interview with Minister Uqbe and Col. Yacob. 90. Connell, Against All Odds, pp. 171-172, relates a similar story from the Eritrean side. A historian and veteran of the Eritrean Independence War, Alemseged Tesfai, and a member of the EPLF Politburo, Mohammed-Seid Bareh, were transporting their injured to safety at Keren when they were suddenly informed of the unpleasant development in the far east that necessitated the withdrawal from the natural fortress city of Keren. 91. These school children constituted the bulk of the nascent Revolution School and grew up to become devoted carriers of EPLF's torch, much to the admiration of the older generation of fighters. Upon independence, the survivors continued to climb the ladder of authority, and they currently occupy some key government positions, such as Minister of Information (without portfolio) and chief of the de facto Presidential Bodyguard Unit. 1254 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 whose panicky officer defected to the EPLF, believing that victory against such an enemy was too much to hope for.92 The EPLF withdrew from Keren. Its forces held new positions at Genfelom (along the Keren–Afabet road) and Agambosa (around Shieb facing the Red Sea).93 As General Omar Tewil’s 8th Brigade had been weakened at Adi-Yacob and Ilabered, the EPLA Command decided to retire it for rest and recuperation at Agambosa, a place considered unattractive for an Ethiopian assault. Whether by coincidence or superb intelligence, Nebelbal, Ethiopia's elite brigade, hit upon the exact location in an attempt to break through and cut the Keren–Afabet– Nakfa road. In a kind of allegory of the epic fight for victory or demise that was the essence of the Eritrean Independence War, the weakened EPLA brigade fought for survival for 12 days while living off a mix of sugar and water.94 Unable to advance, the attacking Ethiopian unit moved farther north along the coast, extending EPLA defenses. A young intelligence officer, Yacob Tekleab (currently serving as a Colonel in Eritrean Military Intelligence), was dispatched to track Nebelbal's movements after Agambosa. He reported the army's sudden turn into the interior in time for the EPLF to sabotage the Ethiopian plan of outflanking the EPLA.95 Meanwhile, having entered Keren from Ilabered, the Ethiopian 506th Task Force pursued the EPLA beyond the city limits only to fall into an ambush. Around Ghenfelom, a natural killing ground with high mountain peaks on both sides of the highway, the EPLA readied a trap that the Ethiopian forces walked into. Under Mount Mesahlit, the Ethiopian army sustained severe losses before being pushed back closer to Keren.96 Although their arrogance did not permit the Ethiopian commanders to give their enemy the slightest credit, they were honest with their superiors in Addis Ababa about what happened: “When it reached Mesahlit, [the 506th Task Force] encountered a well-entrenched rebel force. It could not progress further due to the bad terrain; it was obliged to consolidate positions from which it could defend itself...”97 (Emphasis added). The Ethiopians’ massive offensive gradually assumed a defensive posture five months after they began their projected three-month campaign. In early December 1978, the second offensive came to an end. Ethiopian forces had regained the greater part of Eritrea, although at a considerable price. In spite of the losses they had suffered, Ethiopian army commanders started preparing for yet another offensive. The Ethiopian army faced the same dilemma 92. Conversation with Alemseged Tesfai, Summer 2005, Asmara, Eritrea. Alemseged spoke with the officer right after he reached the EPLF base and vividly remembers the officer's recollections. 93. Interviews with Minister Uqbe and Col. Yacob. 94. Interview with Major General Omar (Tewil), pp. 23-24. 95. Interview with Col. Yacob. 96. Interview with Minister Uqbe. 97. Zemecha-771, p. 13. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1255 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL that many conventional armies faced before and after them, and their commanders responded as many others have done. The narrowing of theatres of operations often times served as equalizers of guerrilla and conventional forces because the latter’s firepower advantages become ineffective and their composition unwieldy. Conventional forces oftentimes fail to restructure their forces into small and light tactical units to counter highly mobile and elusive guerrillas. Failing to achieve their ultimate goal quickly enough, the bulk of Ethiopian troops in clumsy task force formations chased the retreating EPLA into an unknown landscape. This put the Ethiopians at a dangerous disadvantage as their supply lines became stretched. The narrower the theatre of operation, the less useful Ethiopian heavy weapons would be and the more difficult to manage their concentrated, conventional army. Moreover, as the area to be administered grew in size, security became more porous, which made it easier for the EPLA to resume its activities behind Ethiopian lines, distracting and wreaking havoc on the latter from within. The Third Round Offensive After a break of less than two months, the Ethiopian army finished its preparations for the third offensive, which was executed between mid-January and mid-February 1979. So far, it had been prevented from occupying Afabet, at the foot of the mountain range to the south of Nakfa—the key town in the EPLF’s rear base. As part of the new preparations, Ethiopian commanders deployed sophisticated Soviet instruments and personnel. Soviet pilots made intensive aerial reconnaissance of the Sahel province, which continued into the night with the use of infrared light. They carefully studied the EPLF's defense lines and discovered that by going further north along the coast, then turning southwest into the interior, they could breach what they believed was an opening through which they could enter the heart of the EPLF's Nakfa base from behind.98 The Ethiopian army rushed to exploit this weakness. The 505th Task Force, which was still responsible for all operations along the Red Sea coast, was now reorganized and made ready to move toward Alghena on the northeastern edges of the EPLF’s safe haven by marching out from the small harbor at Marsa–Gulbub in late January 1979.99 For its part, the EPLF put two battalions in northeastern Sahel to prevent possible Ethiopian intrusion into its central base. It also dispatched one of its brigades to the eastern escarpments (Semenawi Bahri, literally the Northern Sea) and enhanced its guerrilla activities in an attempt to divide the Ethiopians’ attention. Operating behind enemy lines also helped boost the morale of its ranks and to assure its civilian support base that the EPLF was very much alive, and that these setbacks were only temporary. 98. Interview with Col. Yacob. 99. Zemecha-553, “Huletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awchi Serawit Me'eraf VIII. 505 Ghibre-Hayl” (“Secondary Revolutionary Army of Liberation; Chapter 8. The 505th Task Force”), ND, pp. 7-8. 1256 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 The 29th Mechanized Brigade of the Ethiopian army took the lead and reached around Alghena without much difficulty. It brought the main road going north of Nakfa to Qarora under the Ethiopian army's fire-line, endangering the EPLF's overland access to Sudan through Qarora.100 The significance of this accomplishment was undermined by the EPLF, however. It had foreseen the vulnerability of the road and built an alternative road deeper in the interior that linked Nakfa to the Sudan, far from the Ethiopian army's reach.101 Outmaneuvering the EPLA at Maemide, the Ethiopian army moved a significant portion of its forces to reinforce the 29th Mechanized Brigade, which fully occupied Alghena and the surrounding peaks by January 27, 1979.102 But the Ethiopian army could not advance any farther because the two EPLA battalions left in the area as reserves offered strong resistance until EPLA units at Maemide were able to reinforce the tiny force. Maemide was thus abandoned and the Northeastern Sahel Front was opened roughly extending between the high elevations of Hatseynet and Wedigun.103 By then, the EPLF had abandoned some of its most important posts within the main base, such as Fah, Bliqat, Zero, Seberqete, and Debaat and withdrawn farther into the interior. On February 4, the EPLA successfully staged a daring rescue of its wounded fighters and belongings left behind in the aforementioned posts during its hasty retreat the week before.104 The abandonment of Maemide and formation of the Northeastern Sahel Front in its place left a huge open space between the newly opened frontline and the pre-existing one at Ghenfelom, which the Ethiopian army could easily penetrate. To narrow that gap, the EPLF decided to abandon its positions at Maemide and Ghenfelom at the same time, hence the simultaneous formation of the Northeastern Sahel and Nakfa frontlines. On the latter front, the EPLA entrenched itself in leisurely fashion in the commanding and secure terrain outside the then-obscure town.105 Reorganized and strengthened with fresh reinforcements, the Ethiopian army at Ghenfelom pursued the EPLA to the gates of Nakfa but was easily repulsed. With the formation of these two fronts, the Strategic Withdrawal had come to an end. No further retreat could be considered strategic, as these were the last and best positions to defend. Any failure to ward off further Ethiopian advances on either front would cost the very life of the EPLF and probably the 100. Zemecha-553, “Huletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awchi Serawit Me'eraf VIII. 505 Ghibre-Hayl” (“Secondary Revolutionary Army of Liberation; Chapter 8. The 505th Task Force”), ND, pp. 9-10. 101. Interviews with Minister Uqbe and Col. Asmelash. The EPLF was using the labor of Ethiopian POWs for such construction and other projects. 102. Zemecha-553, “Huletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awchi Serawit Me'eraf VIII. 505 GhibreHayl,” p. 10; Interviews with Uqbe and Col. Asmelash. 103. Interview with Col. Yacob. 104. Hadas Erta, Wednesday, June 7, 1995. 105. Before the formation of the Nakfa Front, however, the EPLA had briefly entrenched at a strategic place known as Qogay. Interviews with Minister Uqbe and Col. Asmelash. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1257 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL Eritrean struggle for independence. Both parties were determined, the Ethiopian Government to annihilate the EPLF and the EPLF to never give up the defense of the Eritrean cause and its own survival. For five years, neither side decisively overcame the other on either front.106 Sahel, the Last Line of Defense The rugged terrain of Eritrea’s Sahel province made it difficult to mobilize a conventional army. After the third offensive, the position of the Ethiopian army on the Nakfa front was suitable neither for attack nor defense. The EPLA, in contrast, controlled strategic positions, which enabled it not only to withstand assaults but also to launch counter-attacks.107 Moreover, as a guerrilla army, the EPLA was inherently able to move fast, strike quickly, and blend in with the terrain and the civilian population. The EPLA had also evolved into a unified, highly disciplined and battle-hardened fighting force. As a result, the EPLA executed successful tactical counter-attacks on the Nakfa Front immediately after the end of the Ethiopian offensive in mid-February. Despite the Ethiopian army’s heavy aerial and artillery bombardments, the EPLA managed to push them back.108 It had been ten months since the Ethiopian offensives started in June 1978. But neither the Eritrean struggle nor the EPLF in particular had been annihilated or even seriously weakened. On the contrary, as its zone of operations shrank and its forces concentrated on defending strategic outposts, the EPLA was actually strengthened from a purely military point of view. In contrast, oblivious to the fact that their forces did not know the enemy’s terrain and were unfamiliar with the warfare techniques most suitable to it, the commanders of the Ethiopian army demanded the deepest possible penetration into enemy territory. In this mountainous terrain, where control of commanding fortresses accounted for so much, the Ethiopian army found itself vulnerable to the EPLA's numerous traps. Also, as the Ethiopian side was outmaneuvered in its bid for control of commanding positions, it handed over the tactical initiative to the EPLA. Little by little, Ethiopian military strategy was falling apart in the face of EPLA successes. Each time the EPLA foiled Ethiopian attempts at encircling its forces and penetrating its rear base, the Ethiopian army failed to thoroughly and correctly appraise the situation and devise a new, more appropriate strategy. Instead it opted for minor tactical improvisations to an increasingly impossible strategy. Its forces unsuccessfully attempted to divide-and-conquer the EPLA by 106. In 1984, the EPLA demolished what the Ethiopians called Wiqaw Command on the Northeast Sahel Front, and four years later the Nadew Command on the Nakfa Front was trounced in a historic three-day battle famously compared to Dien Bien Phu by Basil Davidson, reporting at the scene for the BBC. 107. Zemecha-62, “Ye508gna 'LE' Neus-Ghibre-Hayl YeZemecha Riport Ke7/11/71-22/11/71” (“Campaign Report from 7/11/71-22/11/71 of the 508th 'Le' Sub-Task Force”) August 10, 1971 EC, p. 2. 108. Merih, Jaunuary 1980, pp. 13-14. 1258 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 splitting it into small units within a wider envelopment of the defensive position through a combination of frontal and flanking attacks. The Ethiopian government was determined, however, to achieve its goal at any cost, leading to the fourth and fifth round offensives. The creation of the Northeastern Sahel Front and the Nakfa Front marked the end of the Strategic Withdrawal. The details of the continuous tactical retreats and counter-attacks by both sides lie outside the purview of this essay. Generally, however, the Northeastern Sahel Front stretched north-south for about 40 kilometers from Ghereghir in the north, through Alghena to the south.109 The Nakfa Front stretched for about 30 kilometers along the east-west axis from Gherhafrus in the west, across the Afabet–Nakfa road, through Denden to the Anjehay stream in the east. This mountain range starts far to the west of Nakfa and extends far to the east. Then it joins with another mountain range that runs along the south-north line from Fah and Alghena in the south to the plains south of Qarora. This uninterrupted chain of mountains forms a semi-circle around EPLF’s main base at Nakfa. Oral informants (mainly on the Eritrean side), Eritrean written sources, and Ethiopian archival sources differ slightly in their accounts of these events and their effects. Each side had accurate knowledge regarding the deployment of forces on the other side. The tactical aim of the Ethiopian army in Northeastern Sahel was to occupy the mountain ranges running from Ilatsaeda in the north to Qatar then to Alghena and finally to Fah (which had become a transitional zone after the EPLA’s withdrawal).110 To achieve this goal, the Ethiopian Government deployed seven brigades, three artillery battalions, two tank battalions and a BM battalion.111 The EPLF, on the other hand, had only nine battalions to defend the Front.112 EPLF's Commander of the Northeastern Sahel Front, Uqbe Abraha, accurately estimated the manpower ratio of the two sides between 1:5 and 1:7 in favor of the Ethiopian forces. On the Nakfa Front, the Ethiopian army aimed at taking Nakfa by way of the Nakfa–Afabet road. The breakthrough would be achieved as a result of heavy 109. Interview with Minister Uqbe. This front is sometimes called as the Alghena Front. 110. Interview with Minister Uqbe; Zemecha-553, “Huletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awchi Serawit Me'eraf VIII. 505 Ghibre-Hayl,” pp. 3-4, gives a similar account of the objective. 111. These are: the 505th “A” Sub-Task Force consisting of the 6th, 8th and 90th Brigades, the 29th Mechanized Brigade, 155th Tank Battalion and 157th Artillery Battalion, the 505th “B” SubTask Force consisting of the 20th Nebelbal Brigade, 32nd Brigade, 4th Para Commando Brigade, 24th Artillery Battalion, 401st Tank Battalion and 10th BM Battalion. 112. Zemecha-553, “Huletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awchi Serawit Me'eraf VIII. 505 Ghibre-Hayl” pp. 1-2; Interviews with Minister Uqbe, Col. Yacob, and Col. Asmelash on the Eritrean side mentioned three brigades, which is the equivalent of nine battalions. One of EPLF’s battalions was the Gheleb Battalion, which was elite for its day (not incorporated into any brigade) and another was from the 74th Brigade, EPLA's only—and rudimentary—artillery brigade. There were also two ELF brigades alongside those of the EPLA on this front. This was in accordance with the decision of the joint ELF-EPLF High Political Leadership (HPL) to mix two brigades of each organization together in order to forge a joint front. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1259 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL artillery bombardment and a flanking maneuver. The Ethiopian army deployed fourteen battalions as its main assault force with the 1st Para Commando Brigade as a reserve and the 275th Artillery Battalion and two BM-21 batteries set aside as general reinforcement.113 The EPLF had twelve battalions holding commanding positions and armed with light and medium weapons. The Fourth and Fifth Round Offensives Between April and July 1979, the Ethiopian army launched two offensives. For three weeks in April, its army units attempted to penetrate the EPLA defenses and enter their rear base from behind. From Alghena, Ethiopian forces stretched farther north, occupying the Eritrean–Sudanese border town of Qarora. To ensure that the EPLF would not reinforce its forces in the Northeastern Sahel Front by rotating its units from the Nakfa Front, the Ethiopian army launched simultaneous attacks. The EPLA made up for its thinly-stretched defenses by rushing to take the high mountains of Dembobet and Ilatsaeda to the south of Qarora, which enabled them to drive the Ethiopian army back to its original positions.114 Three months later, in July, the Ethiopian forces launched yet another offensive. Units left behind in the recaptured towns were called up to the Sahel and 2,000 fresh militia units were added to the army on the fronts, bringing the total to about 32,000 men.115 The Ethiopian 10th Brigade was charged with breaking through the frontlines at Nakfa to take the town. By conquering the EPLA’s main base, they hoped definitively to quash the Eritrean struggle for independence, both symbolically and materially. To weaken EPLA resistance at the gates of Nakfa by dividing its attention, the Ethiopian Command used intelligence from a well-informed Eritrean defector and opened a third front near Debaat, between the Northeastern Sahel and Nakfa Fronts. Appraising the risks, the EPLF, however, had already recalled two of its battalions operating behind Ethiopian lines and placed them around Debaat before the Ethiopian 503rd Task Force showed up. When they took position, the EPLA pulled three additional battalions out of Nakfa and Northeastern Sahel to ward off the Ethiopian attack. While Ethiopian sources are silent about this shortlived third theatre of operation, Eritrean sources indicate that the Ethiopian soldiers were literally mowed down; no one made it out alive.116 While fighting was raging on this front at Agraa and Hidaq, the EPLA ambushed an Ethiopian convoy along 113. Zemecha-62, “Ye508gna Neus-Ghibre-Hayl YeZemecha Riport Ke7/11/71-22/11/71,” pp. 1-3; Col. Yacob gives the same figure for the EPLA. 114. Interviews with Minister Uqbe, Col. Yacob, and Col. Asmelash; Zemecha-281, “Ye505gna Ghibre-Hayl YeMiazia ena YeGhenbot Wer YeElet Huneta Riport” (Report on the Daily Conditions of the 505th Task Force in April and May) 1979, pp. 2-6; Beyene, Araya and Abdal-Hakim, pp. 4-5; EPLF/His/Mili:1, “Me'ebaletat Hizbawi Ghinbar Harenet Ertra Kab Kefla 78-1985 Werarat”, p. 4. 115. Beyene, Araya and Abdal-Hakim, p. 7; Interview with Col. Asmelash gives many of the details. 116. Interview with Col. Yacob, emphasizes the role of the fighter. Maj. Gen. Tekhlay Habteselassie (Asmara, 13 September 1997), however, argued that it was a purely Soviet strategy and 1260 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 the Afabet–Keren road and destroyed thirty-nine vehicles; the fighting on the other fronts continued until after the fighting on the third front subsided.117 On the Nakfa Front, the Ethiopian 10th Brigade daringly crawled within five meters of the EPLA trenches on the night of July 14, 1979. Before the soldiers could launch their surprise attack, however, “the bright moonlight” (in their commanders’ words) exposed the Ethiopian soldiers. The EPLA opened fire, battle raged and fierce hand-to-hand combat followed. The attempt was a complete failure.118 In the morning, the EPLA launched a counter-attack, pushing back Ethiopian forces and occupying their positions. These positions were open to Ethiopian long-range bombardments, however, which inflicted considerable losses on the EPLA. The latter defended its newly liberated area with a network of antipersonnel mines. After several reorganizations and reinforcements of their troops, the Ethiopian forces made further attempts, but all came to naught. Several times, only a few meters separated the Eritrean and Ethiopian trenches.119 In Ethiopia, in Addis Ababa in particular, a certain conspiracy theory gained currency to explain why the government forces failed to occupy Nakfa: because the commanders of the Ethiopian army had personal interests in prolonging the war, they gave a mysterious order to their forces to pull back while they were on the verge of occupying Nakfa. The Soviet Union was also believed to have had a hand in this plan. No credible evidence has been found to justify this popular story. Official Ethiopian army reports provide a more mundane explanation regarding the failure to occupy Nakfa:120 1. The offensive position assigned to the 508th Task Force, vis-à-vis the defensive position of the enemy, was not suitable for attack. 2. The enemy had a longer time to strengthen its hold, so our artillery’s effectiveness was not as expected. 3. As the area assigned to the Sub-Task Force was very wide, it could not control the enemy, which was fighting in all directions. 4. As courageous fighters and Communists fell in the fighting at the gates of Nakfa, the army’s fighting capacity decreased. 5. It had been expected that the enemy would remove its force from the front when the 503rd Task Force launched an attack from behind Nakfa; but the enemy’s attention was not divided and it fought with all of its force. that the fighter's role was negligible. EPLF/His/Mili: 1, “Statement on the Fifth Round offensive,” July 20, 1979. 117. Interviews with Col. Asmelash and Kassaye. 118. Zemecha-62, “Ye508gna Neus-Ghibre-Hayl YeZemecha Riport Ke7/11/71-22/11/71” August 10, 1971 EC., pp. 4-6. 119. Zemecha-62, “Ye508gna Neus-Ghibre-Hayl YeZemecha Riport Ke7/11/71-22/11/71” August 10, 1971 EC., pp. 6-9. This area of fierce fighting was called “Fernelo” (literally “stove”) for its constant burning. 120. Zemecha-62, “Ye508gna Neus-Ghibre-Hayl YeZemecha Riport Ke7/11/71-22/11/71” August 10, 1971 EC., pp. 15-16. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1261 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL The Ethiopian Government had gathered all the forces it had in Eritrea and deployed them in the hope of crushing the Eritrean resistance once and for all. Ironically, in the words of EPLF Politburo member and Commander on the Nakfa Front, Petros Solomon, the government's sole accomplishment during the last offensive “was to equalize the balance of power”121 in favor of the Eritreans. With its morale heightened, the EPLA denied the Ethiopian army an opportunity to recuperate and snatched away the initiative. The Eritreans launched an all out counter-offensive five months later, from the Nakfa Front. Less than a month after that, they performed a similar action against the Ethiopian forces on the Northeastern Sahel Front. Both initiatives were successful, and the Ethiopian Task Forces were pushed back. Ethiopia’s Ominous Stalemate Ethiopia’s five offensives were successful in that well over seventy percent of the Eritrean landscape was restored to government control. It came at a high cost, however, from which the Ethiopian government never recovered. According to Eritrean sources, Ethiopian human losses in the period under investigation included more than 20,000 dead, over 14,000 wounded and 1,048 captured.122 Generally, these figures seem to be accurate. The Ethiopian human losses index for the period between June 1978 and July 1979 roughly approximate the total figures given in EPLF accounts for the same time frame.123 Moreover, Ethiopia suffered catastrophic matériel damage, capped by a loss of close to 180 tanks, thirty-eight of which were captured by the EPLA.124 While the extension of supply lines and the vast areas it was now obliged to defend took a heavy toll on the Ethiopian state immediately and in the long-term, the Ethiopian military lost its numerical and weaponry advantages due to the narrowing theatres of operations in areas unfamiliar to its commanders and rank-and-file. Unfortunately, comparative analysis of the damages sustained by the two sides is not possible due to the fact that to this day, accessible Eritrean sources are silent on the EPLA's human and matériel losses with respect to any specific battle(s) or front(s). But their firm roots in the geography and demography of the area gave Eritrean insurgents unmatched advantages over their foes. 121. Petros Solomon in Merih, January 1980, p. 17. 122. Beyene Hailemariam, Araya Yihdego and Abdal-Hakim Mahmud al-Sheikh, Ghenbar Nakfa (Asmara: Adulis Printing Press, 1992). 123. B.33, “YeHuletegna Abyotawi Netsa Awch Serawit YeGudategna Riport” (Casualties Report of the Second Revolutionary Army of Liberation), n.d. Ethiopian casualties were classified as “injured,” “dead,” and “missing.” The first two classifications account for a very small portion, while the third is by far the biggest and brings the total of Ethiopian losses to over 20,000. 124. Ibid. The EPLA immediately put to use the tanks and other armored vehicles they captured from the Ethiopian forces. The seized government weapons made up the bulk of the movement's arsenal throughout the independence war. 1262 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 At the end of the Fifth Offensive in late July 1979, the Nakfa and Northeastern Sahel Fronts had more or less assumed their final strategic contours. The Ethiopian army's position on the Nakfa Front extended for about thirty kilometers, running from east to west.125 The Northeastern Sahel Front extended for about forty kilometers from north to south.126 Five months after the Fifth Offensive, both the Ethiopian army and the EPLA were preparing for a full assault. According to Petros Solomon, the EPLA painstakingly studied the losses Ethiopian forces had sustained during the Withdrawal and, concluding that the Fifth Offensive had been particularly severe, decided that the time had come for an all-out counter offensive.127 This decision was a serious test of the EPLF's policy over the past year, which its leaders diligently defended as a strategic necessity for ultimate victory.128 True to its teachings that a strong enemy could only be weakened and eventually defeated in a protracted people's war in successive stages, the EPLF abandoned positional warfare in favor of offensive-defensive engagements with the Ethiopian troops at a time and place of its choosing. While the EPLF provisionally defended its positions before leaving them for strategically better ones, its mobile units behind enemy lines harassed isolated garrisons and staged daring raids on secure locations for political and material gains. This strategy had served the EPLF well during the Withdrawal. But the perseverance of the Eritrean attitude that its setbacks were temporary and reversible pivoted on the success of the counteroffensive that the EPLF was to launch. On December 2, 1979, Ethiopian commanders mobilized their forces on the right (western) flank of the Nakfa Front and attacked just before the EPLA launched its own counter-attack. While the main body of the EPLA confronted the advancing Ethiopian army, EPLA units that had been placed behind enemy lines for the counter-offensive attacked the Ethiopian army from the rear, slowing its forward momentum. Having neutralized the Ethiopian assault within hours, the EPLA launched its first all out counter-attack on the same day. The fighting as a whole lasted from December 2 to 16, 1979. It had two phases: one on the western flank and another on the eastern. On December 10, the entire right flank of the Ethiopian army was crushed, and their forces retreated to the Beyan foothills.129 As the fighting continued on the left flank, the strategic fortresses130 of Denden, Harena, Gual-Denden, Napalm and It-Halbeb fell to the EPLA, endangering the 125. Petros Solomon in Merih, January 1980, p. 15. 126. Merih, January 1980, p. 29. 127. Petros, in Merih, January 1980, p. 14. 128. Isaias Afwerki in Merih, January 1980, p. 7. 129. Merih, January 1980, pp. 5-7; EPLF/ His/ Mili: 1, “Military Communiqué(s) No. 2-6,” December 3, 4, 5, 7, and 12, 1979. 130. Ethiopian forces briefly recaptured these fortresses during the Sixth (Red Star) Campaign, and Baalu Girma recounts the ghastly accomplishment in his eccentric history of the campaign: Oromay (Addis Ababa: Kuroz ‘asatami dereget , 1992 [1983]). Roughly translated as “weariness” or “alas,” this is a fictionalized account of the failed Ethiopian “Red Star” campaign. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1263 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL positions of the Ethiopian army on the entire flank. Unable to match the EPLA’s speed and aggressiveness, the Ethiopian army started to retreat southwards. But because the surrounding, strategic peaks were under EPLA control, the Ethiopian army could only entrench itself just out of reach of EPLA fire.131 A month later, a similar initiative was taken on the Northeastern Sahel Front. While the objective of the Nakfa initiative was intended to enable the EPLA to improve on its position, in the northeast the objective was to weaken the Ethiopian forces and deny them time to reorganize. It was also aimed at pushing the Ethiopian forces back and rescuing endangered places of strategic significance to the EPLA base.132 Starting simultaneously along the 40-km-long frontline, the fighting lasted from January 5 to 10, 1980. On the eve of the attack, Uqbe Abraha, EPLF Politburo member and commander on that front, expressed his confidence that the EPLA would triumph because they had studied the situation with utmost precision.133 The attack was as fast and vigorous as the planning was meticulous. The surprised Ethiopian army started to suffer losses from the first day of the attack. The EPLA did not give government forces breathing space and vigorously pushed on to the coastal lowlands where the Ethiopian army had its base. Finally, even that base fell to the assailants and Ethiopian troops retreated in disarray further east.134 The EPLA’s aim was achieved, but as the EPLA could not afford to fight the numerically- and materially-superior Ethiopian army in an open area, it climbed back up to its mountain strongholds without any pressure from the Ethiopian army.135 In the short term, the EPLA's counter-offensive proved that the gains of the Ethiopian military were tenuous and reversible. It also became clear that Ethiopian victory in the East against the Republic of Somalia would not be repeated in the North against the Eritrean independence movement. Ethiopian victory became less likely each day for the next twelve years. Moreover, the EPLF and EPLA came out of the confrontations stronger and better-equipped to carry on the fight for the duration of what would still be a long struggle. The intervention of the Soviet Union and its satellites was a double-edged sword both for Ethiopians and Eritreans. Weaponry that brought about the Eritreans’ withdrawal also helped their counter-offensives. Moscow's lavish support filled up Ethiopian arsenals with huge quantities of sophisticated hardware that the EPLF could never hope to match. Expatriate military experts in Ethiopia also took full control of the campaigns in Eritrea, coordinating their execution on the ground, as well as from the air and sea, a method unfamiliar to Africa in general and particularly so to the EPLA. 131. Merih, January 1980, pp. 7-12; Interview with Col. Yacob. 132. Interview with Minister Uqbe. 133. Merih, January 1980, pp. 27-28. 134. Ibid., 28-30; EPLF/His/ Mili 1, “ Military Communiqués No. 7 and 8,” January 6 and 12, 1980; Interviews with Minister Uqbe and Col. Yacob. 135. Interviews with Minister Uqbe. 1264 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 During Ethiopian withdrawals, however, the EPLA captured impressive quantities of the Soviet-supplied weapons and munitions,136 which enabled it to carry on the fight with significantly more efficient and effective firepower. The subsequent military stalemate was thus a triumph in adversity for the EPLF. With better fighting capability, the EPLA was able to maintain its defenses and also to refine its trench warfare. General Omar Tewil recalled that the EPLA had been digging trenches since 1976, when it was on the offensive. Later, spades and shovels became as important as AK-47 assault rifles for the EPLA. Once they reached their last line of defense, EPLA combatants put their collective accumulated knowledge to the test and built a maze of trenches and underground tunnels that proved impenetrable. By contrast, the Ethiopian army was ill-trained for trench warfare. The impact of its heavy weapons decreased with the shrinking theatres of operation. Before Ethiopian forces could fully grasp trench warfare, their Wiqaw Command on the Northeastern Sahel Front was knocked down in 1984 and their Nadew Command on the Nakfa Front was demolished in 1988. During the days of spectacular victories won by the ELF and the EPLF, when independence seemed imminent, Eritrean youth flocked to these organizations out of an urge to contribute to and share in the honor and glory. Between 1975 and 1978, Eritrean youth who either lived in guerrilla-controlled territories or had sneaked out of besieged cities came to spend time with the combatants. They were left with indelible impressions of combatants of similar age living on the bare minimum in camaraderie with each other and willingly paying the ultimate price for their cause. During the Withdrawal, many of these youth resolved that even a short-lived liberation merited dying for. At this time, the flow of volunteers to the organizations—and especially to the EPLF—was unprecedented. With every new combatant who joined the fight, the bond between the guerrillas and Eritrean households became stronger, fueled by filial loyalty or at least concealed sympathy. The EPLF cemented this bond by reaching out to households through its new radio network with news of their loved ones. In January 1979, EPLF radio, The Voice of the Broad Masses, went on the air. Out of reach of Ethiopian or other politico-military leveraging, as had been the case with previous broadcasts from the Middle East, this radio network provided a vital link between the EPLF and the Eritrean people and the outside world alike. By contrast, Addis Ababa’s counterinsurgency failed to win the hearts and minds of the Eritrean people just as Ethiopian troops failed to defeat the Eritrean insurgents on the battleground. As guerrilla wars rely on the people residing in the war zone, a successful anti-guerrilla strategy must necessarily aim at severing the elusive bond between the civilian population and the insurgents. Michael Howard, one of today’s most prominent military historians, wrote that in combating wars 136. According to Dan Connell, for instance, in the engagements of January 1979 alone, the EPLF captured “ ... more than 25 Soviet-supplied T54 tanks and BTR60 armored cars to bring the number of armored vehicles in their hands to more than 80” (Behind the War in Eritrea, p. 59). MILITARY HISTORY ( 1265 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL of liberation (guerrilla wars), military might “...is not sufficient or sometimes even necessary.”137 He instead attributes success to support of the people in the contested areas: “[I]f a guerrilla movement, in spite of repeated defeats and heavy losses, can still rely on a sympathetic population among whom its survivors can recuperate and hide, then all the numerical and technical superiority of its opponents may ultimately count for nothing.” Force, therefore, must be “exercised with precision and control...[and] integrated in a policy based on a thorough comprehension of the societies” in question; otherwise it is counter-productive.138 In the period under investigation, there is no single reference in all of the consulted Ethiopian documents to non-military projects meant to win over the Eritrean people. It was not until the Sixth Offensive (the Red Star Campaign) in 1982 that the Derg government pretended to comprehend the Eritrean society and to solve their grievances. Even then, cultural troupes from mainland Ethiopia holding numerous performances in major Eritrean towns were correctly perceived as seeking to further Ethiopianize Eritrea and not respecting and celebrating its cultures. The maintenance of security in Eritrean towns meant tight control over the ordinary people and forced conscription of their older children into the Ethiopian military. Expanded hospitals catered to wounded soldiers and made little, if any, change to the provision of health care services to the civilian population. And social services suffered in general as considerable sums of money were spent on the war effort. The former Ethiopian Vice-Minister of Information, Baalu Girma, and Ethiopian scholar Gebru Tareke aptly capture these deficiencies and demonstrate the insincerity and contradictory nature of this attempt.139 Throughout their occupation of Eritrea, Ethiopian counterinsurgency strategies lacked an element of restraint. The Derg's belief in a military solution was too deep to apply force with restraint, much less to punctuate it with a nonmilitary strategy. Fortunately for the Eritrean liberation movement, the Ethiopian military apparatus was more intimidating than effective. All Ethiopian campaign reports cited complain of inadequate training and a lack of knowledge of tactics for carrying out retreats. Every day the EPLA held off the Ethiopian advances, the campaign's momentum withered further, and the morale of Ethiopian troops waned. If a reckless strategy and/or incompetent generalship cannot be deemed responsible for these failures, it is only logical to conclude that the greatest strategic blunder was to initiate such a grandiose project without first putting in place the necessary nuts and bolts (a well-trained fighting force), for which ordinary soldiers are certainly not to blame. In the aftermath of the EPLF’s counteroffensives, the Ethiopian government failed to take note of the ominous stalemate, and geared up for intensified confrontation with the insurgents based on overblown statistical reports by its 137. Michael Howard, Studies in War and Peace (London: Temple Smith, 1970), 195. 138. Ibid., 195-196. 139. Baalu Girma, Oromay; Gebru Tareke, “From Lash to Red Star: the Pitfalls of Counterinsurgency in Ethiopia, 1980-82,” Journal of Modern African Studies (2002): 465-498. 1266 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 commanders on the ground. In June 1981, for example, Brigadier Asrat Biru, the Commander of the North Front, presented the Ethiopian Chief-of-Staff with a twelve-page plan to make up for the significantly reduced fighting capacity of their ten brigades on the Nakfa Front and seven brigades on the Northeastern Sahel Front. In it, General Asrat reported his approval of disbanding three brigades on the Nakfa and two on the Northeastern Sahel Fronts in order for their members to fill the void in the remaining brigades caused by losses between late 1979 and 1980. Without any reference to fresh reinforcements, Asrat assured his superior, Brigadier General Haile Giorgis Habtemariam, that the restructuring would result in at least a 26 percent increase in their forces’ fighting capacity on Nakfa Front and another 24 percent on Northeastern Sahel. He proudly added that the supposed increase gave Ethiopian forces a 25 percent advantage over EPLF’s 1,300-man strong brigades on the Nakfa Front and 44 percent on the Northeastern Sahel Front.140 In the absence of Haile Giorgis’ or any other general’s objection to General Asrat’s plan, and given the government’s failure to soberly review its plans in light of its past actions as well as contemporary means and ends as demonstrated by its successive strategic blunders, Ethiopia’s counterinsurgency bounced from one statistical farce to another. This was compounded—if not caused—by the lack of professional and doctrinal cohesion within the Ethiopian military since the Derg seized the reins of power in 1974. According to the preeminent Ethiopian military historian, Gebru Tareke, the “imperial and revolutionary heritages [of the Ethiopian armed forces] clashed continually because of the generational, educational, and political differences within the officer corps.” Having taken over the army and, through the army, the state, junior officers and NCOs assumed the highest military-political offices, shattering “the principles of military hierarchy and professional cohesion” and stifling the force with unresolved tension between them (i.e. power-wielding junior officers) and senior officers who commanded or ought to have commanded the fighting forces on the ground.141 All these weaknesses notwithstanding, Ethiopian commanders’ swaggering comparison of their forces to the Eritrean insurgents whom they continued to denigrate spoke to the further gloom that awaited them in Eritrea. Conclusion Convinced that sophisticated weapons and its advantage in numbers would overwhelm the guerrilla fighters, the Ethiopian government boasted of a quick victory. This weapons arsenal certainly paid off; much of Eritrea was recaptured from the guerrillas, the northeastern edge being the only exception. Losing territory, however, is quite different from losing a war. Out-manned and out140. ”Kiflochen be-Matef Hayl Mamualat” (“Folding/Merging Units in order to Make up for Capacity”), from Brigadier General Asrat Biru to Brigadier General Haile Giorgis Habtemariam, 06/28/1981. This document is available at the Asmara-based Eritrean Research and Documentation Center. 141. Tareke, The Ethiopian Revolution, 115-116. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1267 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL gunned, Eritrean forces nonetheless managed to pull back in a well-organized manner, while delaying Ethiopian takeover of towns and outposts until their political staff and civilian dependents could be transported to safer places. In the process the EPLA saved the lives of countless guerrilla fighters and civilians. It also exacted a terrible cost from the Ethiopian army. By going back to guerrilla and mobile warfare while engaging the Ethiopian army in conventional battles, the Eritreans managed to create strength from their weaknesses. Throughout its five offensives, the Ethiopian army employed a standard army strategy and tactics that relied heavily on its technological and numerical superiority: piecemeal attacks, frontal attacks, secondary attacks, penetrations and combinations thereof. Against these, the EPLA resorted to Fabian delaying actions and offensive-defensive tactics. EPLA speed and flexibility also denied the Ethiopian army the ability to apply more advantageous tactics such as envelopments, double envelopments and turning movements. Rather than observing and adapting to the EPLA’s methods, Ethiopian strategists stuck with their original military plan, extending its span through constant tactical life-support. For their part, the Eritrean independence fighters exploited barriers—terrain, climate, support from society and others—that stopped the superior Ethiopian army from piercing through Eritrea’s hostile landscape.142 The EPLA consistently retreated to narrower and more strategic places to hold off their stronger enemy, weaken Ethiopian initiative, and launch surprise attacks against Ethiopian troops in wider and disadvantageous areas. The EPLA’s effective use of these tactics can be partially attributed to the initial training in China (and to some extent Cuba) that the founders of the EPLF received. However, there is little doubt that Eritrean leaders’ accumulated experiences were important in shaping their military thinking. As able commanders with direct participation in and control of the battles, EPLF military commanders cultivated this principal strength by perfecting their skills on the job. Carl von Clausewitz reminds us that since the data used in military planning are not absolute, some adjustments have to be made on the fly. For that reason, a strategist must have hands-on control of battles so that “detailed orders can then be given on the spot, allowing the general plan to be adjusted to the modifications that are continuously required.”143 The EPLF was able to do so by institutionalizing conventional principles of war144 and by developing an elusive mechanism of spying on the Ethiopian military that produced reliable and superior intelligence. A veteran of EPLA military intelligence, Col. Yacob, 142. Mao Zedong, On Guerrilla Warfare, 42. Defining guerrilla warfare as a war conducted by the side inferior in armament, Mao Zedong had long argued that guerrilla forces’ survival and success hinged on their ability to exploit the barriers—terrain, climate, society and others—that inhibit the superior adversary as they pierce into the guerrillas’ territory. 143. Clausewitz, On War, 207. 144. David H. Zook, Jr. and Robin Higham, A Short History of Warfare (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1966), 29. Drawing upon the views of Major General J. F. C. Fuller, the authors out- 1268 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 claimed, “We knew our enemy better than our enemy knew us.” Such assertions were credible, given that information from interviews with Eritrean commanders and intelligence officers was often confirmed by relevant Ethiopian documents, down to the smallest factual detail. The outcome of the Ethiopian-Eritrean military encounters also hinged on a number of individual and collective qualities or lack thereof. To begin with, the feasibility of EPLF leaders’ strategic vision was key. Likewise, the subordinate leaders and rank-and-file fighters’ selfless execution of plans charted by their leaders was instrumental. Equally important were the trust and communication among the Eritrean hierarchy, which did not compromise the chain of command. These were possible because of the underlying sense of purpose, commitment and perseverance of all the individuals involved and because of consistent civilian support.145 The EPLF (and the EPLA) was superior to the Ethiopians in all of these aspects. Eritrean leaders also effectively exploited the lack of these qualities on the Ethiopian side. The quintessential component of the EPLA’s strength rested on the bond between the planners of strategy and those who executed it down to the rank-andfile level. In interviews, all EPLA commanders spoke highly of their selfless troops, who inspired them to do better every time, while the troops claimed that they had no reason to doubt their leaders as they lived, ate, and died alongside the common fighters. Such trust among the leaders and followers was a necessary component for success. While that trust in turn emanated from the shared commitment among individual independence fighters (leaders and rank-and-file alike) to the goals and methods of the EPLF, it is important to highlight the “disciplinarian” and harmonizing role the secret party within the EPLF played in this regard. The Eritrean Strategic Withdrawal does not match the sheer magnitude and global implications of the Chinese Long March, but it marked another historical precedent in establishing that not all retrograde movements are indications of defeat. Although EPLF’s protracted people's war had a long way to go, the EPLF lined the elements of victory in war: “the objective, which must be realizable, clearly understood, and pursued by the commander; the offensive, which must be undertaken at the proper time and place if victory is to be achieved; security, which must be preserved so that the other principles may be applied unimpeded; concentration or mass, the commitment of means at the decisive time and place; economy of force, the best use of available means; maneuver, the positioning of forces through mobility [flexibility] for maximum advantage; simplicity, especially in planning; unity of command, the concentration of authority and responsibility; surprise, striking the enemy in areas least expected.” Clausewitz has noted most of these points, and they are found throughout On War (Book Two, “On the Theory of War”), 153-204. 145. The last person to evacuate Keren, EPLF leader Isaias Afwerki, pulled to the side of the road and confided in Dan Connell: “The face of the war has changed. We’re not fighting the Ethiopians anymore—now it is the Soviet Union. Whatever their intentions, whatever their interests, we will continue to fight.” Years later, Isaias spoke to Connell about that moment: “When I am challenged, I become more stubborn.” Connell, Against All Odds, 173. In the broader panorama of the Eritrean Independence War, almost everyone who committed him/herself to its cause shared that stubborn will to fight on in the face of overwhelming odds. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1269 AWET T. WELDEMICHAEL came out of the setbacks of 1978-1979 strengthened. From serious setbacks and a profound sense of betrayal, the Eritrean fighters brought out determined selfreliance and foresight that won a war the world thought was already over. Coupled with and capitalizing on Ethiopian shortcomings, Eritrean foresight had farreaching politico-military significance. There were two harbingers of local and regional transformation: first, the EPLA's triumphant march into Asmara, and second, its elite mechanized and commando units' spearheading the entry of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF, a coalition of Ethiopian opposition groups) into the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in May 1991. The EPLF assisted in the formation of the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF, the dominant force within the EPRDF coalition) in the mid-1970s and collaborated afterwards because of its need for a buffer from and diversion of the Ethiopian forces from Ethiopia proper. Moreover, the Eritrean movement was convinced that a military victory over the Ethiopian forces in Eritrea was not enough to guarantee the respect of Eritrean independence. In 1985, the EPLF openly declared this long held conviction thus: As long as a repressive and expansionist government that does not recognize Eritrea’s especial identity and its people’s right to independence is in Addis Ababa, there would be no guarantee for the peace, stability and independence of Eritrea even after Eritrean forces defeat the Ethiopians on the battle field.146 The huge resources that the Ethiopian government mobilized and its successful reversing of the trend in Eritrea from near defeat were ample indicators of the efficacy of that strategy. While Eritrea needed a “democratic alternative” to the government in Addis Ababa, the TPLF needed crucial support in training, arms, and experience in guerrilla warfare as well as access to the outside world at the early stages of its existence.147 Despite their discord in the mid-1980s, the EPLF did not burn bridges but left possibilities open for the resumption of relations. Nor did the TPLF question the fact that Eritrea was a colonial case, which could only be resolved through the exercise of the right to self-determination. As a result, as the developments in the late 1980s necessitated coordination of their activities, the EPLF committed its elite commando and mechanized units to joint military operations with the EPRDF inside Ethiopia. Not only did EPLF’s elite brigades significantly facilitate the crumbling of the Derg government and its replacement by the current TPLF-dominated EPRDF coalition, they also helped consolidate the latter’s grip on power. In 1993, Eritrea held an internationally monitored referendum to legitimize its military victory. Initially, however, the UN and the Organization of African 146. Voice of the Broad Masses, “The EPLF and its Relationship with the Democratic Movements in Ethiopia,” (Tigrigna) 31 January-2 February 1985. 147. Tesfaye Gebreab, “Ye Mussie Ghedl,” Teraroch Yanqeteqete Tiwlid, Vol. II (Addis Ababa: Mega Publishing Enterprise, 1997); John Young, “The Tigray and Eritrean People’s Liberation Fronts: a History of Tensions and Pragmatism,” The Journal of Modern African Studies (1997). 1270 ( THE JOURNAL OF The Eritrean Long March, 1978–1979 Unity (OAU, the predecessor of the African Union) refused to witness the 1993 Eritrean referendum and approve its outcome without Ethiopia’s green light. The EPLF-TPLF/EPRDF relationship was important in securing the then interim President Meles Zenawi’s letter of Ethiopia’s concession, paving the way for uncomplicated consummation of Eritrea’s ascent to formal independence.148 148. Former Eritrean Foreign Minister Haile Weld’etensae, talk to Eritreans residing in the greater Los Angeles area, March 2000, Los Angeles. MILITARY HISTORY ( 1271