Combat & Survival
Volume 10 - Issue 7 October 1998

Many or the buildings are pockmarked by bullet holes and some are roofless and gutted where mortars or artillery shells have dropped in. Zalambassa is an Ethiopian border town - or at least it was. Now the Eritreans are here and their front lines are another couple of miles up the road.

The Eritreans say their neighbours attacked their border post on May 31. They say they repulsed eight attacks before they went on the offensive marching into Zalambassa a week later. Missiles rained down on the Ethiopians, fired from Stalin Organ BM-21 multiple rocket launchers. Howitzer shells and mortars smashed into the fields around the town as T-54 tanks ploughed through the landscape leaving great furrows. Farm land was carved our with deep trenches, which would change hands several times over the next few days.

The bloody border conflict between these two neighbouring states in the Horn of Africa started on May 6 this year. Three Lieutenant Colonels of the EDF (Eritrean Defence Force), together with four soldiers, travelled to the Badme border area to investigate reports that Ethiopian administrators and police had moved into an area contested between the two countries. They found Ethiopian militias there; were taken aside and shot.

After almost tour weeks of light skirmishing, full scale war erupted. On June 5 at 14:13 hrs three Ethiopian MIG-23 jets attacked Asmara airport. Fifty minutes later, Eritrean jets bombed the MIGs' military base in Ethiopia at Mekele.

Unknown to the Eritrean Air Force, the Ethiopians had admitted large numbers or civilians to the military airport to welcome back their 'heroic' pilots. Around 40 civilians died in the air attack. Next day, the Ethiopians attacked Asmara again with three MIG-23s, but accurate anti-aircraft fire brought down two of the attacking aircraft.

Within 24 hours full scale war had broken out on the borders. The following day, the Ethiopians attacked hundreds of miles away to the east with a drive towards the Eritrean Red Sea port of Assab. Although border incursions were alleged, it seems more likely that the Ethiopians had decided to attempt to secure a much needed port on the Red Sea. In the event, the Ethiopian regular army and militias of the Tigrayan Peoples' Liberation Front (TPLF) were beaten back on all three fronts.

At Zalambassa, the EDF secured a strategic ridge from which they could look down on Ethiopian forces who several times attempted to storm the EDF positions in human wave attacks.

Hundreds - if not thousands - of men died in these attacks, mown down by machine gun fire, mortars, artillery and rockets. One attack was made by crack Ethiopian paratroopers but they also sustained serious casualties and fled. Privately, EDF soldiers say the Ethiopians lost two divisions - some 10,000 men - around Zalambassa.

The streets of Zalambassa were littered with bodies which baked in the sun for days until they were scooped up and dumped in a mass grave.

The Ethiopians tried similar suicide tactics on the Assab front. One EDF soldier said, "They just kept coming and we kept on mowing them down." After two days of such attacks the EDF commander decided to move forward and his troops drove the Ethiopian soldiers thirty kilometres into their own territory.

The Ethiopian attacks appear to have been misconceived and to have taken no account of the lessons of history. The State of Eritrea was carved out of Ethiopia in a long, thirty year war which brought about the demise of the two Ethiopian governments of Emperor Haile Selassie and Marxist dictator Mengistu. It was the longest continuous war that modern Africa has known. Every person in Eritrea - bordered to the east and north by Sudan, to the south by Ethiopia and Djibouti - is fiercely proud of this remarkable achievement. The men and women who took part in what Eritreans call The Struggle are deeply respected for their contribution and are known as The Fighters. There are more than three million people in Eritrea. When you ask the stock question, which is a starting point for a Combat & Survival correspondent, "What is the size at your army?" you invariably get the response, quick as a flash, "Three million, of course."

For an African state, Eritrea is remarkably unified, hard working and dedicated to national improvement. The Struggle brought death and tragedy to virtually every family: around 65,000 fighters died taking on MIG jets, tanks and rocket launchers provided by the Soviet Union: they are known as the Martyrs, as well as 150,000 civilians.

The war of independence was notable for the fact that that large numbers of women joined men on the front lines in combat. So, when fighting broke out on the border with Ethiopia on May 6 this year, there was no lack battle-hardened fighters heading for the front.

There were no official figures for the size of the Eritrean Defence Force although an establishment of 46,000 is often quoted from outside the country. There are the men and women carrying out National Service; there is a small, elite commando brigade made up of former Fighters: a core regular army of around 5,000 soldiers who have chosen to stay on after National Service; and a vast body of men and women who regard themselves constantly on call. Within hours of hostilities breaking out with Ethiopia, it is reckoned that in excess of 200,00 fighters had come forward for service at the front; around 100,000 thousand were actually deployed.

Every man or woman is required to undertake National Service upon reaching the age of 18. This invariably takes the form of six months basic military training. One Fighter said, "Every adult in this country has learned to use all the weapons in our armoury". This means that not only are all personnel trained in pistol, rifle and AK-47 use, but they also learn to use howitzers and mortars. After six months basic training there is a choice of remaining with the EDF or spending the next twelve months in the service of the country in a variety of roles - varying from road building to traffic police and parking attendant. There is a nominal payment during the period but food and board is provided by the state.

The EDF is a low tech but highly motivated army. A government spokesman told me, "We have the most cost effective army in the world - and one at the best trained." Thirty years of experience of guerrilla warfare have honed supply and logistics to a fine art. Although the Ethiopians are far more numerous and better armed in terms of artillery, airpower and tanks, Eritrea is virtually surrounded by mountains and the landscape rather favours the tough and experienced infantry men of the EDF who are well practised at trench style and mountain warfare. The only way to dislodge the EDF once entrenched would be by bayonet charges and bloody hand-to-hand fighting: they proved more than able to counter this type of attack during May and June.

The AK-47 is the standard infantry weapon and RPG-7s and mortars are also in use. Virtually all of the heavier weaponry was captured from the Ethiopian army in the 1970s and 80s: so-called Stalin Organ multiple rocket launchers, howitzers and T-54 tanks.

There are believed to be around 90-100 main battle tanks. Spares for the Russian-built kit are being supplied from Romania; Israel is involved in brokering some arms deals. Several Russian-built tanks were captured during the fighting of June 5-8 this year and a significant quantity of trucks and light 4x4s also appear to have been taken. EDF officers were to be seen being proudly driven around Zalambassa in Russian UAZ 4~s still bearing their Ethiopian number plates!

Training of the EDF has been assisted by the US with joint exercises mounted. The US has also just wound up a mine disposal operation which has disposed of tens of thousands of mines left over from the war of independence. The Italian armed forces have been involved in an advisory/ training role but their involvement ceased with the present conflict.

In 1991, Eritrea acquired significant Ethiopian naval assets along with the Red Sea ports of Massawa and Assab. They sold off most of them around 1993 and planned to reinvest the money in communications and electronic warfare equipment. In 1996 the Eritrean Air Force bought six Italian Aermacchi 339 advanced fighter training aircraft, and, the following year, got eight Finnish Rodigo trainers. A Chinese Y-I2 transport acquired in 1992 has now effectively been decommissioned. There is an unknown quantity of Mil-17 helicopters but no helicopter gunships. The trainers have been adapted for a ground attack role. Although sophisticated command, control and communications equipment has been ordered by the Ministry of Defence this was not in place in time for use in the June conflict.

If their military operation had been properly planned and coordinated, the Ethiopians should have been able to utilise their superior air power, tanks and artillery to immobilise key targets and mount a blitzkrieg on EDF positions. In the event it appears there was no coordinated strategy which lends weight to one view that the Ethiopians had simply "let the TPLF militias off the leash" in the hope that they could achieve some easy successes in border clashes.

Government sources in Asmara contradict this view pointing to the fact that over the period May 16-18, Ethiopian TV showed pictures of large numbers of regular soldiers being deployed in Hercules aircraft to areas around Eritrea's borders, and the fact that the Ethiopian High Command moved to the war zone. In the event, the highly trained and motivated EDF proved more than a match for both the Ethiopian militias and the regular army.

Eritrea's War of Independence

In 1962, Emperor Haile Selassie annexed the former Italian colony of Eritrea, which Ethiopia had administered under United Nations mandate for a decade. The colony had previously been run by the British who seized it from the Italians in 1941 after almost half a century of colonial rule from Rome. The creation of Eritrea by the Italians had brought about powerful feelings of independence and cultural identity in the population and shortly after the Ethiopian annexation a group of nationalist stole two pistols and attacked a police station. The fight for independence - which was to last for thirty years - had begun.

The first freedom fighters were organized under the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF) but as the independence movement grew it fractionalised and eventually the Eritrean Peoples' Liberation Front (EPLF) emerged as the major player. It has been described by intelligence sources as 'the most effective guerrilla force to emerge anywhere in the world': between 1962 and '77 the ELF and EPLF took control of 90% of Eritrea. But When Haile Selassie was replaced by the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, the tide began to flow militarily against the Eritreans. Mengistu's regime was supported by the governments of Russia and Cuba which appreciated the strategic significance of the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopian forces received military training from the Russian and Cuban military. Military equipment flowed into the arsenals of the Ethiopian army. Most significantly the Ethiopians were given MIG-23 fighter bombers armed with deadly cluster bombs and napalm, as well as T-54 tanks, Zil trucks and 'Stalin Organ multiple rocket launchers. In the north of Eritrea, the centre of resistance, the town of Nacfa, was totally destroyed by aerial attack and the Eritreans, who had no defences against attack from the air, were forced to abandon the area in an operation called the Strategic Withdrawal: a classic Maoist guerrilla strategy.

After 1978, the Ethiopians launched annual Soviet-planned offensives. In 1982, they launched the massive Red Star offensive in which they utilised their entire military resources. The offensives continued through 1985, even when Eritrea was gripped by a devastating famine. All the offensives were fought off by EPLF soldiers, still referred to - to this day with great and genuine respect - as The Fighters. A 250 mile-long trench network was created, separating the two armies. By 1984, the EPLF had captured enough Soviet tanks to defeat the Ethiopians in a classic, set piece tank battle.

In 1988, the EPLF broke out of its dug-in positions and captured the garrison town of Afabet, destroying an entire Ethiopian division. Although with just 35,000 men and women under arms the Eritrean forces were less than 10% of the size of their enemies, this was the turning point of the war which armed up the EPLF with a large quantity of brand new military equipment: tanks, l30mm howitzers and vast supplies of ammunition. In February 1990, they captured the port of Massawa and then encircled the capital, Asmara. By this time, the Eritreans were holding 50,000 Ethiopian prisoners of war and the end was in sight.

By May 1991 the capital was surrounded. President Mengistu of Ethiopia, staring defeat in the face, fled to Zimbabwe abandoning his troops and generals. On May 24 1993 Eritrea was formally declared independent after a referendum - and thirty years of war.

Graphics: - The Soviet-built Stalin Organ multiple rocket launcher, which was captured from the Ethiopians during the war of independence, which ended in 1991, was turned against its former owners: Sami Sallinen via Paul Harris; - An Eritrean Defence Force officer directs rocket fire onto Ethiopian positions: Sami Sallinen via Paul Harris; - Cheerful EDF soldiers redeploying at dawn on board a requisitioned truck; - Women of the EDF parade in the capital, Asmara, Sami Sallinen via Paul Harris; - EDF soldiers rest after battle, Zalambassa; (...); - Most of the vehicles at Radio Marina are Soviet, these are BRDM-2 wheeled APCs, but there are also some former US assets dating back to the period before Soviet influence came to Ethiopia.

Ending Years of Stalemate, Eritrean Rebels Drive Ethiopians Into Retreat

By JOHN KIFNER, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Published: August 23, 1988

For a decade, this was the headquarters for Ethiopian Army forces battling Eritrean rebels in the world's longest guerrilla war. Now, after a string of rebel victories in these bleak, stony mountains, it is a rear area for the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, and the officers' barracks and perimeter foxholes are deserted.

The sole reminder of Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime is a big concrete sculpture of a hammer and sickle, painted red, atop the guardhouse.

The leftist insurgency against the Moscow-backed Government, which also faces rebellion in neighboring Tigre Province, has led President Mengistu to declare a state of national emergency, to oust all foreign aid workers, to arrange a hasty peace with Somalia, to the south, to free up more troops and to step up raids on civilian areas to deny food to the Eritreans. The State Department says two million people are at risk of starvation.

The fighting now is about 15 miles down the road toward Keren, near the provincial capital of Asmara. More important than the loss of territory is the damage to the Ethiopian Army -a third of its strength here has been destroyed - and the capture of quantities of heavy weapons for the first time. The acquisition of about 50 130-millimeter howitzers and rocket launchers has greatly increased the firepower of the rebels, who must capture most of their weapons from their foes. Howitzers Boom, The Ground Rumbles

The new heavy weaponry was much in evidence during a visit in late July to the front developing near Keren. The ground shook with each round a newly acquired howitzer fired as its crew, some casually clad in jogging suits, coordinated with forward observers by walkie-talkie. Some of a score of Soviet-made ZU-23 antiaircraft guns captured in the battle were hidden under trees or dug into earthworks. At least 20 Soviet-made T-55 tanks were said to have been added to the considerable number already taken.

As darkness fell, convoys of Mercedes trucks filled with guerrillas bounced along the rough roads and mountain switchbacks south toward the fighting. Wary of the Soviet-supplied air power they cannot effectively challenge, the Eritreans prefer to move only at night.

The Ethiopians have struck back in recent weeks with air and ground attacks. Soldiers are said to have gunned down some civilians and driven others off their farms. In May, the Eritreans say, Ethiopian troops killed 400 villagers at a place called Sheeb, crushing 40 of them beneath tanks.

Af Abed is a small market town, one broad dirt street about three blocks long, lined with single-story mud or cinder block buildings and spiky-leaved trees and set on a vast, dusty plain. It is nearly empty now, with only a few shopkeepers tending their stores.

The Government, which is known as the ''Dergue,'' or ''committee,'' although also translate this as ''shadow,'' sent in its MIG's to bomb in May, killing three people. Most of the population has fled to the countryside.

''This Dergue is like a hyena,'' said Abdul Ali as the others grumbled agreement. ''We have a Government that smashes simple civilians and turns the houses to ashes. Does a government have any meaning without the people?''

A man from the Keren area lamented: ''Except for what I have on my body, I have nothing. They are not only killing just the men, but women and small children by the bayonet. Since the massacres, especially the women and children are crazy with fear.''

An Amnesty International report in 1987 said its evidence ''points overwhelmingly to the persistence of torture on a substantial scale in Ethiopia.'' Amnesty also said it had documented the killing of 30,000 opponents of the Government in 1976-1978 in a crackdown called the ''red terror.'' The Addis Ababa Government denies this. Two Vital Ports And 35,000 Guerrillas

Neither Colonel Mengistu nor his predecessor, Emperor Haile Selassie, has been able to suppress nationalism in Eritrea, a roughly triangular slice of northern Ethiopia that once was a separate Italian colony. It includes the vital Red Sea ports of Massawa and Assab, without which Ethiopia would be landlocked.

The Eritrean rebellion, numbering about 35,000 guerrillas, faces the largest army in black Africa, more than 220,000 troops armed with some $4 billion in Soviet weaponry.

The Eritreans, abandoned by their Soviet backers in the mid-1970's when the new junta in Addis Ababa aligned itself with Moscow, say they receive little outside aid, and food and supplies are trucked in across the desert from the southern Sudan.

For nine years, the war had been stalemated in World War I-style trench warfare along a line stretching almost 200 miles, the opposing earthworks climbing along the hills and valleys. Since the first shots were fired in 1961, the Government has staged at least eight major offensives. None achieved much success, but for years, rebel counterattacks were pre-empted by infighting between the the leftist Eritrean People's Liberation Front and the Islamic fundamentalist Eritrean Liberation Front.

The leftists gained dominance in 1981, and in December 1987 the guerrillas broke through the lines from their main base at the bombed-out town of Nakfa. In March, they overran Af Abed in a wild battle in which they say they killed or captured 18,000 Ethiopian troops, sending many fleeing in panic.

An ambush south of here took out much of the Ethiopian command as it retreated toward Keren. Among those captured were three Soviet military advisers - a fourth was killed - and the army's chief political commissar for the northern region.

The Eritrean victory here, the most significant in the 27 years of conflict, came after a stepped-up series of offenses over the preceding six months. At the same time, in neighboring Tigre Province, the Tigrean People's Liberation Front, which is seeking autonomy, went on the attack, capturing several towns and villages in March, including Wukro, which served as a center for famine relief. The Eritrean and Tigrean rebels had been at odds, but this spring they signed an agreement that included military cooperation.

After the fall of Af Abed, President Mengistu declared a state of emergency. The colonel, who had avoided any public mention of the Eritrean rebellion, went on the Government radio to call on Ethiopians to ''rise in unity and face the new challenge'' of what he called ''grim battles'' and a ''systematic and highly destructive campaign'' in the north. He warned that it could be a long war and issued the order, ''Everything to the front.''

The emergency decree empowered soldiers to shoot anyone they suspected of aiding the Eritreans and declared a 10-mile wide strip along the Red Sea coast - a fertile plain vital to farmers and nomadic herdsmen - as a no man's land. Reinforcements were rushed northward; some of the units came from the southern border, where a longstanding border dispute with Somalia was set aside. By agreement with the Somali Government, the border was demilitarized after 11 years of intermittent fighting over the disputed Ogaden region. Foreign Relief Workers Are Ordered Out

On April 6, President Mengistu ordered all foreign relief workers to leave Eritrea and Tigre; most refused his demand that they turn over their supplies and equipment to the Government. The expulsion order crippled efforts to feed what the United States Agency for International Development estimates to be five million to seven million people in danger of starvation from drought and famine. Most of these, however, appear to be in areas controlled by the Government.

Eritreans and Western relief workers contended that President Mengistu's intention was to divert the food, trucks, medicine and manpower to the war effort, and more importantly, to prevent foreigners from witnessing the widespread killing of civilians.

Government counterattacks were staged in May, with little success. In one, the Government's most elite force, an airborne commando unit, was wiped out and its commander, Brig. Gen. Temesgen Gemechu, killed. It was another blow to the morale of the army. Even before the defeat at Af Abed, Brig. Gen. Taiku Taye, the commander of the Nagfa front, was executed in front of his troops because of the rebels' December breakthrough, and several other ranking officers have since been punished.

The Soviet Union is reported to have sent replacements for much of the equipment lost by its client this spring. But in the new mood of disengagement from regional trouble spots fostered by the Soviet leader, Mikhail S. Gorbachev, there are some indications that Moscow might seek a compromise.

The long struggle over Eritrea has its roots not only in local factors, but in the interests and rivalries over the years of the great powers in the strategic Horn of Africa.

Eritrea was colonized by Italy in 1890, in the waning days of the European move into Africa. Seeing Eritrea as a springboard to further conquest, the Italians built roads and industry during their 51-year rule, but in 1941, six years after they had taken Ethiopia itself from Haile Selassie, Italian troops were defeated here by the British. Britain administered the territory until 1952, continuing modernization.

At various conferences after World War II to decide the future of scattered lands held by the Axis powers, Ethiopia made clear its desire to annex Eritrea, primarily to control the Red Sea ports.

At the urging of the United States, the United Nations awarded Eritrea to Ethiopia in 1952 under a ''federation'' arrangement that was to include an autonomous local legislature.

The American interest was not only in strengthening Ethiopia, its major ally in the region, and protecting the Red Sea ports, but in its big communications base, Kagnew Station, at Asmara. Israel, which wanted to prevent the Red Sea ports from possibly falling into the hands of an unfriendly Arab government, provided military support and advisers to Ethiopia, in part to suppress the early Eritrean resistance.

But Haile Selassie, while regarded as a hero in the West for his defiance of Mussolini, was a harsh autocrat at home. He banned Eritrea's major language, Tigrinya, in favor of Amharic, and harassed and arrested local leaders. In September 1962, the legislature was dissolved and Eritrea was absorbed into Ethiopia.

In 1974 the Emperor was overthrown by the military junta that became the Dergue under Colonel Mengistu. In 1977, the new rulers broke with Washington and announced their new allegiance to Moscow. But their policy remained the same on one important matter: Eritrea. A Harsh Land And a Diverse People

At first glance, Eritrea seems an unlikely candidate for such nationalist ambitions.

Eritrea's roughly 50,000 square miles comprise rugged mountains, sandy deserts, flat plains and East African bush, all made more inhospitable by years of drought and war.

Its people are hardly less diverse. There are nine languages and major differences between educated city dwellers from Asmara and the tribes of the remote regions, and between Christians and Moslems. About half the population is Christian, mainly Ethiopian Orthodox, who live mostly in the highlands as settled farmers. The other half are Moslems, living mostly in the lowlands as nomadic herdsmen.

How, then, has the nationalist movement gathered such strength that it now seems on the brink of success?

''A dramatic event like our recent offensive helps people focus, because it seems like a simple contrast of black and white,'' said Isseyas Aferworki, the soft-spoken secretary general of the rebel front who has been fighting for 21 of his 41 years. ''But it's not one single incident that has created this new military and political situation. It's been an accumulation of developments over the past 10 years. We have learned the hard way.''

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