1984–5 Famine sweeps northern Ethiopia, Bob Geldof organizes Band Aid.
1985 Mikhail Gorbachev comes to power in Soviet Union.
1988 EPLF smashes Ethiopia’s Nadew Command at Afabet, ending military stalemate.
1989 Berlin wall comes down.
1991 Eritrean and Ethiopian rebels capture Asmara and Addis. Mengistu flees.
1993 Eritreans vote for independence in UN-monitored referendum.
1997 Eritrea launches its own currency, the nakfa. Ethiopian and Eritrean forces clash at Bure and Bada.
1998 Skirmishes at Badme escalate into new war between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
2000 UN peacekeepers sent to patrol temporary security zone between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Eritrean president Isaias Afewerki arrests domestic critics, closes private press.
2002 Boundary Commission announces ruling on border, allotting Badme to Eritrea.
Glossary and Acronyms
As there is no precise formula for translating Tigrinya and Amharic into the Roman alphabet, Eritrean and Ethiopian names can be spelt in a variety of ways. When identifying living individuals, I have used the version they preferred. When dealing with historical figures and places, I have chosen the version I guessed readers were most likely to have encountered in the past.
Abyssinia Former name for Ethiopia. It stopped being used after World War II.
Amhara Ethiopia’s dominant ethnic group, from which its rulers traditionally came.
Ascari Eritreans recruited to serve in Italy’s colonial army. Between 1890 and 1941, around 130,000 Eritreans served as ascaris, fighting at the battle of Adua, in Somalia and in Libya. They also played a crucial role in Italy’s 1935 invasion of Ethiopia.
ASA Army Security Agency. Branch of the US’ highly secretive National Security Agency in Fort Meade, where government communications are enciphered and foreign communications monitored. It ran Kagnew Station until 1972.
Berbere Rich mix of spices used in Eritrean and Ethiopian food. Derg Popular term for the Provisional Military Administrative Council, a shadowy group of dissident army officers that emerged in Ethiopia in early 1974. The Derg overthrew Haile Selassie and shocked the public by then killing its own chairman, executing 59 former government members and cutting ties with the US. By 1977, having eliminated his rivals, Mengistu Haile Mariam emerged as its undisputed leader.
Eritrean rebel movements Eritrea’s armed struggle was launched by the Eritrean Liberation Front (ELF), founded in Cairo in 1960 by Moslem Eritreans. Although it had strong links with Arab states, the ELF initially recruited both Christians and Moslems. But in the early 1970s a group of Christian highlanders broke away, going on to form the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF). Civil wars between the two movements played disastrously into Ethiopia’s hands. But by 1980 the EPLF had eclipsed the ELF, whose remnants were pushed into Sudan. Both movements embraced Marxism, although the EPLF watered down its Communist message as victory approached.
EPRDF In 1989 Ethiopia’s ethnically-based opposition movements merged to form the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front, dominated by the TPLF. The coalition captured Addis Ababa in 1991 with Eritrean support and set up Ethiopia’s current government.
Isaias Afwerki President of Eritrea and former EPLF secretary-general. Born in a district of Asmara in 1946, he interrupted his engineering studies at Addis Ababa University to join the ELF. He was sent to China for training but grew disillusioned, setting up the EPLF with a group of close associates.
Kebessa Eritrea’s central highlands, inhabited by Christian, Tigrinya-speaking people. Include the historic provinces of Hamasien, Akele Guzai and Seraye.
Meles Zenawi Prime Minister of Ethiopia. Born in Adua in 1956, he interrupted his medical studies in Addis Ababa to join the TPLF, rising to the post of chairman.
Mengistu Haile Mariam Of modest origins, Major Mengistu emerged as leader of the Derg in the mid-1970s and went on to establish one-man rule. He brutally suppressed opposition during the Red Terror, embraced Marxism and won massive military backing from Moscow for his wars on Somalia and Eritrean separatism. Sometimes dubbed ‘the Red Negus’, he fled to exile in Zimbabwe in 1991.
Oromo A pastoral people, the Oromo began migrating in the mid-16th century into southern and southeastern Ethiopia, where they gradually integrated with the Amhara nobility. They are now the country’s largest ethnic group.
PFDJ In February 1994, with independence achieved, the EPLF dissolved itself and launched a political movement, the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice.
Ras Ethiopian title for ‘prince’ or ‘duke’.
Ras Tafari Son of the governor of Harar province, Ras Tafari became regent to Empress Zawditu, acceding to the imperial throne following her death. He took the name ‘Haile Selassie’, ‘Power of the Trinity’ in Amharic.
Shabia ‘People’s’ or ‘popular’–used to denote the EPLF. Shemmah White cotton shawl.
Shewa Central Ethiopian province, historically the heart of Abyssinia’s Christian empire. It recovered that role in the late 19th century under Menelik ll, and now holds the modern capital of Addis Ababa.
Shifta Traditionally applied to those who rebelled against their feudal lords. It was later used to denote armed bandits operating in the countryside.
Tegadlai Freedom fighter. Plural is tegadelti.
Tigray North-eastern Ethiopian province, bordering Eritrea. Political centre of the ancient Axumite empire. Its people are known as Tigrayans. They share their Tigrinya language, highland customs and Orthodox Christian faith with inhabitants of the Eritrean kebessa.
TPLF Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front. Marxist-Leninist movement that sprang up in Ethiopia’s northern province in the mid-1970s. Relations with the longer-established Eritrean rebel groups across the border were strained by ideological and tactical differences, but in 1988 the TPLF and EPLF agreed to cooperate on military strategy, a move that led to the Derg’s defeat.
Woyane used to denote the TPLF.
Notes
Chapter 1 The City Above the Clouds
1 Two photographic books capture the wonders of urban Asmara: Edward Denison, Guang Yu Ren and Naigzy Gebremedhin, Asmara–Africa’s secret modernist city, Merrell, 2003; Sami Sallinen, Asmara Beloved, Kimaathi, 2004
2 Presidential interview with Scott Stearns of Voice of America and Richard Dowden of The Economist, April 9, 1999
Chapter 2 The Last Italian
1 Cesare Correnti, addressing the Italian Geographical Society, April 18, 1875. Maria Carazzi, ‘La Societa Geografica Italiana e l’esplorazione coloniale in Africa: (1867–1900)’, La Nuova Italia, 1972, pp 144–57
2 Pellegrino Matteucci took part in an 1879 expedition, subsidized by northern Italian industrialists, to assess Abyssinia’s commercial potential. His conclusions were damning. ‘Allowing Italy to nurse any illusions about a country’s wealth, if it doesn’t exist, strikes me as anti-patriotic,’ he recorded in his memoirs: Angelo del Boca, Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, Mondadori, p 93
3 Ferdinando Martini,Nell’Affrica Italiana, Fratelli Treves Editori, Milan, 1891, p 332
4 Foreign Minister Pasquale Mancini, January 27, 1885: Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, p 182
5 Dizionario Biografico De Guberatis, Firenze, 1879
6 Former army officer Cesare Pini, who served in Eritrea, recalled a ‘flood’ of death sentences in Asmara following the Massawa scandal. Haunted by those executions–he said he bore personal witness to around 40–he was struck by the fortitude shown by the condemned: ‘I never saw a single one of those blacks, even those who were very young, almost boys, humiliate himself, rage or weep: not once!’ Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, p 447
7 Achille Bizzoni, L’Eritrea nel passato e nel presente, Milano, Sonzogno, 1897
8 For more on this episode, see Massimo Romandini, ‘Il “dopo Adua” di Ferdinando Martini, governatore civile in Eritrea’, Studi Piacentini, 20, 1996, pp 177–204; M
assimo Romandini, ‘Da Massaua ad Asmara: Ferdinando Martini in Eritrea nel 1891’, La Conoscenza dell’Asia e dell’Africa nel X1X Secolo, vol III, 1989, pp 911–33; Robert Battaglia, La Prima Guerra d’Africa, Einaudi, 1958; Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, pp 435–61
9 For more on colonial theories of biological determinism, see Sven Lindqvist, Exterminate all the Brutes, Granta Books, 1992
Chapter 3 The Steel Snake
1 The idiosyncrasies of Eritrea’s system have won it a keen following amongst railway experts around the world. For details, see ‘Railways Administration in Eritrea’, Imperial Ethiopian Government, 1965. ‘Eritrea–Rebirth of a Railway’, a video by Nick Lera, Locomotion Pictures, tracks the rehabilitation project; www.trainweb.org/eritrean has a site dedicated to the subject and a book by Jennie Street is due to be published by Rail Romances in 2006
2 Richard Pankhurst, The Ethiopians: a History, Blackwell, 2001
3 Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, p 740
4 Ferdinando Martini, Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1, Vallecchi Editore, 1946, p1
5 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1, Foreword
6 ibid
7 ibid
8 ibid, p 165
9 ibid, p 29
10 ibid, p 60
11 ibid, p 23
12 ibid, p 165
13 ibid, p 159
14 ibid, p 89
15 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 2, p 121
16 Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, p 758
17 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3, p 328
18 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 1, p 3
19 ibid, p 94
20 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3, p 3
21 ibid, p 424
22 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 4, pp 48–9
23 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 3, p 248
24 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 2, p 472; see also, Massimo Romandini, ‘Il Problema Scolastico Nella Colonia Eritrea: Gli Anni 1898–1907’, Africa, September 1984
25 Massimo Romandini, ‘Ferdinando Martini ad Addis Ababa’,Miscellanea di storia delle esplorazioni geografiche, IX, Genoa, 1984, pp 201–43
26 Il Diario Eritreo, Vol 4, p 606
27 Author’s interview
28 Emilio de Bono, Anno XIII: The Conquest of an Empire, Cresset Press, 1937; Angelo del Boca, The Ethiopian War 1935–1941, University of Chicago Press, 1969, p 4
29 The Ethiopian War 1935–1941, p 21
30 The Ethiopian War 1935–1941, p 210
31 Giorgio Maria Sangiorgio, see Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3, p 219
32 Richard Pankhurst, ‘The Legal Question of Racism in Eritrea during the British Military Administration’, Northeast African Studies, vol 2, part 2, 1995; Richard Pankhurst, ‘Fascist Racial Policies in Ethiopia 1922–1941’, Ethiopia Observer 12, pp 92–127
33 Martino Moreno, head of political affairs at the Ministry; see Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3, p 239
34 Araia Tseggai, ‘Historical Analysis of Infrastructural Development in Italian Eritrea 1885–1941’, Part 2, Journal of Eritrean Studies, vol 1, no 2, 1987; see also Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3, pp 236–23
35 Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3, p 239
36 Gazetta del Popolo, May 21, 1936. Once again, top-level attempts to prevent interbreeding proved stunningly unsuccessful. In 1950, the Associazione Meticci dell’Eritrea estimated the number of half-castes at 25,000, although that number, confusingly, included Eritrean mothers
37 Author’s interview
Chapter 4 This Horrible Escarpment
1 ‘Retrospect’–Lecture by Lieutenant-General Sir William Platt, Khartoum, 1941
2 AJ Barker, Eritrea 1941, Faber and Faber, 1966
3 The tale of the Italian officer who staged the cavalry charge is told in Sebastian O’Kelly, Amedeo: A true story of love and war in Abyssinia, HarperCollins, 2002
4 Imperial War Museum, London; Sound Archives 7373/3 A
5 Archibald Harrington, Imperial War Museum; Sound Archives 8332/7 A
6 ‘Retrospect’
7 Author’s interview
8 Eritrea 1941, p 101
9 Peter Cochrane, Charlie Company, Chatto & Windus, 1977, p 64
10 Imperial War Museum, 7373/3 A
11 Eritrea 1941, p 136
12 ‘Retrospect’
13 Author’s interview
14 Charlie Company, p 72
15 Imperial War Museum, 7373/3 A
16 General Nicola Carnimeo, Cheren, Casella Editore, 1950, p 212
17 ‘Retrospect’
18 Alberto Rovighi, Le Operazione in Africa Orientale, Vol 1, Officio Storico SME, Rome, 1995, p 256; Gli Italiani in Africa Orientale, Vol 3, p 433
19 ‘The Abyssinian Campaigns’, The Official Account, London, 1942, p46
20 MAJ Trimmer, West Yorkshire Regiment, letter of September 1942
21 Imperial War Museum 7373/3 A
Chapter 5 The Curse of the Queen of Sheba
1 GKN Trevaskis, Eritrea, a Colony in Transition, Oxford University Press, 1960, p 21
2 Commander Edward Ellsberg, a former US naval officer, was sent to Eritrea in 1941 to clear the scuttled ships from Massawa port. He must have been in charge of the shipyard labourers from whom Cicoria learned his skills. Ellsberg was nonplussed by the scene that met him on Asmara’s streets. ‘Apparently every Italian officer captured in the East African campaign the year before was out, magnificently caparisoned, strutting along the Viale Mussolini…Every one of these prisoners of war was armed–clinging from his waist was an automatic pistol protruding from its holster! There were enough armed Italian officers in sight easily to take over the country.’ Edward Ellsberg, Under the Red Sea Sun, Dodd, Mead and Sons, 1946
3 The Jewish prisoners were highly inventive, digging tunnels, donning mocked-up British army uniforms, requisitioning buses and disguising themselves as Arab women in their attempts to escape across the border. David Cracknell, deputy police commissioner in Asmara at the time, told the author his men once fished Yitzhak Shamir from the tank of a water container in which he had been hiding, hoping to pass through police checkpoints unnoticed. Cracknell was proud of the fact that 106 of the 107 men who escaped from Sembel internment camp were recaptured. Eliyahu Lankin was the only man to slip through his clutches, reaching Djibouti via Addis. ‘I’ll never forget that name,’ Cracknell said
4 Author’s interview
5 Richard Pankhurst, ‘The Legal Question of Racism in Eritrea during the British Military Administration’, Northeast African Studies, vol 2, part 2, 1995
6 The political scene was always more complicated than this summary suggests. Woldeab Woldemariam, regarded as the founding father of the Eritrean independence movement, was a Christian highlander who started his political career with the Unionist Party. Moslems were not the only citizens suspicious of Ethiopia, and not all those who believed in Union were Christians
7 Wilfred Thesiger, Arabian Sands, Penguin, 1985
8 For an exhaustive account of the theories surrounding the Ark’s location, see Graham Hancock, The Sign and the Seal, William Heinemann, 1993. Hancock concludes, somewhat surprisingly, that the Ark may well be in Axum
9 Translation used by Miguel Brooks, Kebra Negast, The Glory of the Kings, The Red Sea Press, 1995
10 Author’s interview
11 SKB Asante, Pan-African Protest: West Africa and the Italo-Ethiopian Crisis 1934–1941, Longmans, 1977, p 60
12 Report of the United Nations Commission for Eritrea, General Assembly, Fifth Session, Supplement No 8 (A/1285), New York, 1950, p 46
13 ‘The Ethiopian Revolution and the Problem in Eritrea’, cited in David Pool, ‘The Eritrean Case–Ethiopia and Eritrea: the precolonial period’, Research and Information Centre on Eritrea, Rome, 1984
14 ibid
15 Massimo Romandini, ‘Ferdinando Martini ad Addis Ababa’, Miscellanea di Storia delle esplorazioni geografiche IX, Genoa, 1984
Chapter 6 The Feminist Fuzzy-Wuzzy
1 FO 371/108261, Pu
blic Record Office, Kew
2 FO 371/80957
3 Colonel Maurice Petherick MP, February 6, 1945; FO 371/46070 J 563
4 First issue of New Times and Ethiopia News, May 5, 1936
5 Letter to Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence, February 1936. Richard Pankhurst, Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, Tsehai Publishers, 2003, p 38
6 Author’s interview
7 Author’s interview
8 Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, p 20
9 Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana: The Autobiography of Kwame Nkrumah, Thomas Nelson and Sons, Edinburgh, 1957
10 In Jamaica, followers of Rastafarianism went even further, hailing Ras Tafari as the living God. While Haile Selassie was always reluctant to publicly offend the Rastafarians by denouncing their faith, as head of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church he, like most Ethiopian Christians, would have regarded it as sacrilegious
11 Author’s interview
12 Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, p 126; FO 371/24639
13 Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, p 113
14 FO 371/35841
15 New Times and Ethiopia News, December 9, 1944
16 FO 371/46070
17 Sylvia Pankhurst: Counsel for Ethiopia, p 236; FO 371/63217
18 In Patricia Romero, E Sylvia Pankhurst: Portrait of a Radical, Yale University Press, 1987, the author interviewed Musa Galaal, a young Somali student who met Sylvia in the 1950s. He found Sylvia so ‘pro-Ethiopia she considered all of Africa to be Ethiopia’. Unaware she was championing a rigidly Amhara version of history, she insisted all Somalis were, in fact, Ethiopians. ‘What could you be that is better than being an Ethiopian?’ she asked him, causing great offence
19 FO 371/108261
20 In an interview with the author, Spencer recalled several disputes over infrastructure with the British authorities. ‘What made me quite angry was that they took the dry dock installation and shipped it off to Pakistan. I said “Surely this belongs to Ethiopia?” but they shipped it off anyway.’ He said most of his information on the British dismantling in Eritrea came from Sylvia, but he found her radicalism alarming. ‘She was really an aggressive person, far too aggressive.’
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