as well as the widest possible measure of self-
government’. Instead, they were federated with
Ethiopia, so that Ethiopia might have access
to the sea. The dominant West at the United
Nations believed it had a secure ally in Haile
Selassie, and the Red Sea was too important
strategically to allow a small Eritrean state inde-
pendence, and so, decisive influence. The Eritrean
Liberation Movement was soon formed, only
to be brutally suppressed, and in 1962 Haile
Selassie annexed Eritrea. With the assistance of
Arab neighbours, the newly founded Eritrean
Liberation Front took up the armed struggle
against Ethiopia in the 1960s and, despite splits
and intrigues, fought the longest war in Africa
until Mengistu’s overthrow in 1991. South of
Eritrea lies northern Ethiopia, inhabited by the
Tigray peoples, some 5 million strong. They too
waged a liberation struggle against Mengistu’s
rule. Droughts and fighting devastated subsis-
tence agriculture, so that famines decimated the
Tigreans. At the same time, the Ethiopians were
fighting the Republic of Somalia over the terri-
tory known as the Ogaden. The new rulers of
Ethiopia brought peace to the country. The
regions enjoyed some autonomy; when a referen-
dum was held, Eritrea overwhelmingly chose
independence in 1993. All this gave a chance for
famine relief to reach starving peoples. Two of the
poorest countries in Africa, Ethiopia and Eritrea,
wasted their scarce resources fighting each other.
War between them seemed least likely at the
outset after the overthrow of the Marxist regime
in Ethiopia in 1991. The Eritrean president
Issajas Afwerki and the Ethiopian new prime
minister of Ethiopia Meles Zenawi had been rebel
comrades in arms when they ousted the dictator
Mengistu. The separation of the two countries in
1993 allowing Eritrea independence had been
peaceful. The delimitation of the new frontier,
neither country willing to lose authority by com-
promise over a small area of land, spluttered into
war in 1998. War forced hundreds of thousands
of the poorest farmers to flee from the fighting
zones and face starvation. UN intervention, the
despatch of peacekeepers, mediation leading to an
agreement to submit the border dispute to an
international commission ended fighting in 2000,
but when in March 2003 the commission
awarded the disputed village and the inhospitable
land surrounding it to Eritrea, Meles Zenawi
refused to accept the finding. War threatened
once more. Pride, nationalism and sheer folly
condemned tens of thousands to die. Without
substantial food aid another mass famine in
Ethiopia and Eritrea threatens thousands of lives.The Republic of Somalia was created in 1960 from
the Italian and British colonies of Somaliland.
Somalians share language, culture and Islam, and
nationalism is a strong force, able to survive the
colonial partitions by Italy, Britain and France.
The Ogaden had been conquered by the
Abyssinians in the 1890s, and after the Second
World War it was once more handed back to
Ethiopia. Conflict between the two countries
arose soon after the establishment of Somali inde-
pendence. In 1969 there was a military revolution
in Somalia, which received Soviet support, but
when Somalia and Ethiopia went to war again
in 1977 the Soviet Union – forced to choose
between two of its clients – eventually backed the
stronger Mengistu. The Somali army was defeated
in the Ogaden in 1978. The US meanwhile
replaced the USSR in Somalia.
Thus internal strife in the strategically import-
ant Horn of Africa led to a Cold War game of
musical chairs. Nothing illustrates better the hol-
lowness of the pretensions of these African mili-
tary regimes when they claim they are following
‘democratic free world’ principles of government
or modelling themselves on the Marxist people’s
republics. The politics of Africa reflect African
realities: the first requirement of leadership is to
stay in power and to maintain the cohesion of the
new nation. The Somali Democratic Republic was
ruled by a Supreme Revolutionary Council under
its president, General Mohammed Barre, until
his downfall in 1991. Warfare and internal strife
had reduced this poorest of African countries,
dependent on subsistence agriculture, to near
starvation. In 1990 the country descended into
chaos, with Barre trying ruthlessly to hold it
together by using his elite guards.
In January 1991 Barre was driven from power.
Even worse was in store for the people of Somalia