Every Anniversary of Independence, which occurred de facto on May 24, 1991, with the entry of the EPLF (Eritrean People’s Liberation Front) forces into Asmara and the expulsion of what remained of the now-decadent Ethiopian rule, and reaffirmed de jure on May 24, 1993, with the country’s entry into the UN after the plebiscitary response to the referendum it had overseen, is celebrated with a new slogan, different from the previous ones, making it forever unique and unforgettable. This year, perhaps no better one could have been chosen, so representative and biographical of the complex and profound Eritrean history: “Our Cohesion: Our Armour!“. The image accompanying the slogan features a large burning torch, held by a hand: it often appears, even in the images of past Anniversaries, enriched from time to time with different motifs and subjects, confirming how connotative it is of Eritrean national history and culture. Moreover, there is no doubt that the country has always been united and cohesive, finding in these qualities part of the reasons for its great strength and resilience, while the torch of the national spirit burns robustly and vigorously: it would suffice in this regard to look at its history, past and recent, to realize this abundantly.
It is well known that since the end of the Second World War, like every other former Italian colony, Eritrea also had the full right to Independence. However, the victors did not think so: the Negus of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, who returned to the throne after the expulsion of the Italians by the British in 1941, claimed it for himself, eager to fulfill an ancient Ethiopian ambition, to reach the sea; while his closest allies, England and the United States, did not in turn disdain this idea, still considering it strategic to keep him as a friend. Thus, abandoning a temporary plan to dismember Eritrea between Ethiopia and Sudan, the British made common cause with the Americans, and even the defeated, starting with the Italians who had expressed some reservations, had to comply: in 1952, after the end of the provisional British military government over Eritrea, it would become a federated State to the Ethiopian Crown. The then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, despite knowing the great desire for Independence of the Eritreans, cynically commented: “From the point of view of justice, the opinions of the Eritrean people must be taken into consideration. However, the strategic interests of the United States in the Red Sea basin and considerations of security and peace in the world make it necessary that the country be linked to our ally, Ethiopia“.
However, federating a state like Eritrea, already equipped with all its democratic and parliamentary institutions, parties, newspapers, and trade unions, to an absolute monarchy like the Ethiopia of that time, devoid of such bodies and governed by the will of an autocrat like the Negus, already seemed like an experiment destined for unhappy outcomes. And so it was: if during their provisional military government the British had proceeded to plunder as many infrastructures and machinery as they could from the former Italian colony, until 1941 the most advanced and industrialized of the entire African Continent, the Ethiopian officers in turn began to suppress all the democratic institutions of the country on the orders of their sovereign, in order to finally make it completely homogeneous with the more backward and hierarchical Negus monarchy. The discontent among the Eritreans and also among many Italians who remained in the area began to express itself, and the repressions of the Ethiopian authorities intensified, until at the end of the 1950s what remained of the old “Federated State of Eritrea” was reduced by decree to a mere 14th province of the Empire of Ethiopia. In the meantime, however, in Cairo, some patriots had founded the ELF (Eritrean Liberation Front), with the aim of fighting to obtain the never-experienced Independence. Among its leading figures was the one who would first light the torch of the armed struggle by attacking an Ethiopian police post, the National Hero Hamid Idris Awate. Is it a coincidence that the poster with this year’s slogan depicts a torch? Reading the rest of Eritrean history, we will understand that that torch was held and would later be held by many other hands, those of an entire people, a cohesive people.
At the end of the 1960s, recognizing the internal contradictions that the ELF carried with it and that hampered its ability to carry forward the struggle, some young Eritrean patriots decided to form a new organization, which in the following decade would become even more structured: it was the EPLF, with strong bases not only national and patriotic but also socialist and Marxist. For the EPLF, the Eritrean War of Liberation was also a social, emancipatory, and anti-colonial Revolution, with the equal participation of men and women, who would soon become over 35% of the Tegadelti, or the fighters for Independence. That new movement would give new and immense trouble to the increasingly struggling Ethiopian troops, eventually leading to the fall of the Negus in 1974. That event, however, would not yet improve things in either Eritrea or Ethiopia: after the fall of the old imperial regime, a military junta, the DERG, was installed in Addis Ababa, within which, after a bloody settling of scores, the sinister figure of the “Red Negus” Mengistu Haile Mariam would prevail. Finding himself at loggerheads with Somalia, with which the Negus had already clashed in the 1960s, Mengistu proclaimed the socialist and pro-Soviet nature of his regime, thus obtaining economic and military assistance from the Soviets and Cubans. Billions of dollars in economic funds and military equipment, even extremely advanced, arrived in Ethiopia from the USSR, transforming it into the largest African arsenal. Thanks to this aid, the DERG managed to maintain the Ogaden, which Somalia had occupied by aiding the Somalis of that Ethiopian region who wanted to join Mogadishu, and then tried to definitively get rid of the EPLF, which had increasingly gained ground. With Operation Red Star, the Ethiopian troops attacked the Eritrean strongholds while the Soviet Navy in turn bombarded them from the Red Sea. Even napalm was not spared, along with other weapons prohibited by international conventions.
Yet, despite all that aid, the Ethiopian troops always lost against the Tegadelti. The latter quickly and profitably recovered all the lost ground, moreover seizing much of their weaponry from the increasingly demoralized Ethiopian troops, who since 1989 no longer enjoyed Soviet assistance, which had been revoked, nor Cuban assistance, with Fidel Castro having greatly changed his mind about Mengistu. Already in the 1980s, the EPLF had gained, at the expense of the adversary, such firepower as to allow it to openly challenge him, so much so that with its tanks as well as ultra-fast boats between February 8 and 10, 1990, it was able to liberate the city of Massawa with Operation Fenkil, dealing a very heavy blow to the regime, and in the following year, completing the liberation of the entire Eritrean territory by moving from success to success. Not only that, but always with its own means, indispensable for ensuring coverage of the other Ethiopian resistance movements as well, in May 1991 the EPLF entered Addis Ababa itself with its flags, also liquidating what still remained of the old, exhausted regime there. Mengistu had already fled to Zimbabwe several days earlier, on May 21, after resigning and taking much of the national treasury with him, while on May 24, as we recounted, the EPLF had entered Asmara, the capital of Eritrea, thus sanctioning its definitive Liberation. It was therefore a path of triumphs, but also of great sacrifices: many fell, the Martyrs, around whose memory the immense Eritrean national spirit is forged. That torch burns also and above all for them.
The date of May 24, 1991, was so important for Eritrea and Eritreans, therefore, that it made the choice of May 24 two years later obligatory to present itself to the whole world as the then youngest African Nation. The celebrations that were held in 1991 as in subsequent years, by the many Eritreans who went abroad to form a vast Diaspora from the West to the Middle East and part of Africa, where they found refuge during the years of the War of Liberation and where they found funds and support to carry it forward and plead its cause, will always remain memorable. Great help was given, and it is right to remember it, by countries like Somalia and Sudan, with the former providing Somali visas and passports from the consulate in Khartoum where many Eritreans had found shelter from the persecutions of the DERG, so that they could then also travel abroad and obtain care and support there. This immense debt of gratitude also explains the great support that Eritrea gives today to Somalis and Sudanese, whose countries are going through difficult times, so that they may one day return to live in safety and peace. And another great help was given, especially in Italy, by the city of Bologna, which from the 1970s became a true “moral capital” of the Diaspora and the Eritrean Community, and remains so to this day. So much so that right now, including in Bologna, the celebrations of the large Eritrean Community in Italy are taking place; others in Rome, Catania, Pisa, while still others will be held in the coming days. Similarly in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United States, everywhere, in addition to the Motherland, of course.
What we recount here is very little of the whole; but probably now readers will understand why that Cohesion is also the Armour of the Eritrean Nation. Thirty years of the War of Liberation would not have been possible without that Cohesion, nor would it have been possible to conclude them with such a victory, with Independence; and even less to defend it from the aggressions suffered later, primarily that of 1998-2000, when Ethiopia led by Meles Zenawi again attempted the conquest of Eritrea; or to embellish it as its first 34 years of independent life testify, making today’s Eritrea the totally sovereign country to which many young pan-Africanists look as an example for their own emancipation. Today’s Eritrea is the only case in African history of a country that has developed since Independence without incurring foreign debt, particularly with the Western economic institutions responsible for neocolonialism in the rest of the Continent, having built, relying solely on its own forces, more than 800 dams and water reservoirs that have made once arid and drought-stricken lands green, rainy, and cultivated, not being part of the NATO/AFRICOM apparatus and having no foreign military bases on its territory, and managing all this even in the face of long years of international sanctions. The torch of these 34 years of Independence is a torch that burns with joy.
