Despite conflict resolution, rift widens between African nations

A ruling last week by an international commission settled a five-year-old border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, putting an end to a costly and deadly war.

But for Esayas Zekarias, the reverberations of the border conflict will likely continue to bring pain.

"I was born in Ethiopia," explains the student over lunch at the South End Cafe, an Eritrean restaurant in Lower Roxbury. "I used to have a lot of Ethiopian friends."

Zekarias' family members, like tens of thousands of Eritreans living in Ethiopia, were forcibly repatriated at the outbreak of the war. Their property was confiscated by the Ethiopian government.

Here in the United States, the conflict between the two East African communities is reverberating on a personal level.

"My Ethiopian friends, they never asked me about how my family is," Zekarias said.

The war broke out in 1998, when Eritrean troops overran a disputed border town called Badme, where the residents spoke Tigrean, but considered themselves Ethiopian citizens.

Ethiopia retaliated, re-taking Badme and engaging the Eritrean army in an all-out war along the countries' 620-mile border.

"The Eritreans really thought that the Ethiopian government was in a weak position and couldn't mobilize resources to the battlefront," said Boston University History Professor James McCann, who directs the school's African Studies Center. "They guessed wrong."

The Ethiopian army overwhelmed the Eritrean army in the two-year armed phase of the conflict, in which 80,000 soldiers and civilians were killed.

After United Nations intervention, both sides agreed to a cease fire and an independent commission based at The Hague.

In the wake of the ruling by the independent commission both sides claimed victory.

"As a people and a nation, we have been vindicated," said Roxbury Community College Professor Tesfay Aradom. "We believe there was a serious effort by the Ethiopian government to claim territory that was not theirs."

The independent commission's ruling essentially stuck to the borders between Ethiopia and Eritrea that were carved out by Italy when it invaded the latter area. Although Italy attempted to invade Ethiopia, it was never able to obtain a foothold in the country.

With the war now over, the Ethiopian and Eritrean governments are now focusing on the demobilization of troops. Eritrea has more than 200,000 soldiers who must now re-integrate into civil society and is seeking $200 million in international aid.

The cessation of the conflict will force both governments to tackle economic issues as well, according to Aradom.

"Now we can actually direct our attention on social and economic development," he said. "The government no longer has an excuse for their political problems. They will have to stay in office based on their policies, rather than on the pretext of a patch of land."

A greater challenge for Eritrea may be in rebuilding a relationship with Ethiopia, a major trade partner on which it depended for much of its commerce. While Ethiopia during the war solidified trade relations with neighboring Djibouti, gaining access to a port city, Eritrea now no longer benefits from the transshipment of Ethiopian goods.

"Eritrea can't live without Ethiopia, in spite of what they say," McCann said. "Eritrea needs Ethiopia much more than the other way around."

Photograph (Tresfay Aradom)