Spilling Blood over Water? The Cnse of Ethiopia30 June to 9 July 1998. The committee prepared a report on this basis and
the ministers of foreign affairs of Burkina Faso, Djibouti and Zimbabwe, as
well as the secretary general of the OAU, subsequently endorsed the recom-
mendations during a meeting in Burkina Faso the following month. A frame-
work agreement was then submitted to the two, supported by the UN
Security Council and the European Union.
The recommendations included:
a commitment by both parties to put an immediate end to ail hostilities;
the redeployment of the armed forces (Eritrea) present in Badme town and
its environs to positions held before 6 May 1998 and the reinstatement of
the Ethiopian civilian administration;
the deployment of a group of military observers to supervise the with-
drawal; and
the demilitarisation of the entire common border.Ethiopia announced its acceptance of the framework agreement proposed by
the OAU delegation on 9 November 1998, while Eritrea remained silent. The
situation deteriorated from this point and war broke out towards the end of
February 1999. After the first counter-offensive on the Badme front by
Ethiopia, Eritrea announced to the UN Security Council that it accepted the
framework agreement. However, within days of accepting the framework
agreement, Erittea rejected the Ethiopian demand for a complete and unilat-
eral withdrawal of EriUea forces from all of its occupied territories.
The war now escalated and Ethiopia launched repeated military offensives
in May 2000 against Eritrea. Ethiopia reclaimed all territories previously occu-
pied by the Eritrean forces and occupied further territories inside Eritrea. After
a bloody war, on 18 June, Ethiopia and Erittea signed a ceasefire as a first step
toward a comprehensive peace agreement. A subsequent peace agreement
signed in Algiers formally ended the two-year war. A UN peacekeeping mis-
sion. UNMEE, has been deployed in a demilitarised zone in the border area to
monitor the ceasefire agreement, to observe the full withdrawal of troops from
the area and to facilitate the demarcation of the border.
Ethnic Conflict
Conflict between different ethnic groups within Ethiopia is common. Between
pastoratist groups, these conflicts often involve competition to control grazing
lands and water supplies, and they increase during drought. However, the
nature of communal conflict in Ethiopia took new forms following the demar-
cation of boundaries. This demarcation fragmented groups and impeded cross-
border movements essential to the viability of customary resourceuse systems.
The Haud pastures found in the Ogaden region, for example, were long a