"The struggle had to take on both a national and a class character " Interview with EPLF leader THE FOLLOWING is an interview with Andebrhan W. Giorgis, the representative of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front in France. Giorgis is a member of the Central Committee of the EPLF.
ERITREA opposed to the Eritrean Liberation
Front.
For 11 years there was virtually civil war. It was a question of political line; whether or not to pursue a clear national democratic strategy with a socialist orientation, waging the armed struggle but carry. ing out fundamental social changes at the same time in the liberated areas. The problem of land reform for example was not just a question of parcelling out the land but also of encouraging cooperative farming. There was the question of building schools, hospitals, the expansion of medical care, the fight against illiteracy and in a sense laying the ground. work for a new society.
So there were two forms of struggle; firstly armed struggle to liberate territory, to liberate more areas, more people, and at the same time a social, political and economic struggle to transform the old society into a new one. So the struggle had to take both a national and a class character. The ELF's position was; 'let's fight now, let's drive Ethiopian colonialism out first and then we'll think about class struggle, after independence.' This was a very classic stages theory. For us the whole thing had to go together. This in general is our basic policy.
### Could you elaborate the nature of Eritrean society? Also could you give more information on the type of organisation built up in the liberated areas?
A. To understand Eritrean society today one should also go back a little to the period of Italian domination, especially under the fascists after the rise of Mussolini. He had a design to create a huge East African, Italian empire, and Eritrea would serve as a springboard. So there began a process of rapid industrialisation; railroads, highways were constructed, ports were expanded, cities created, factories established. With the result that in a relatively short period of time, from 1925 till 1940, there took place a rapid industrialisation, to the extent that by the 1940s the Eritrean population was about 20 per cent urbanised. This was one of the highest rates of urbanisation in the Third World.
There developed this process of economic integration. Various parts of Eritrea were brought together, through communications, urbanisation and industrialisation. People from different walks of life, from the different parts and the different nationalities were brought together. This created the nucleus of Eritrean nationalism.
So there you have the basis for Eritrean nationalism with a new
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Question. How was the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) formed?
Answer. The Eritrean question is first and foremost a question of decolonisation in Africa because Eritrea like Libya and others was a former Italian colony during the partition of Africa by the various European colonial powers.
Then in 1941 the Italian forces were defeated by the allied forces headed by the British in East Africa. Then Eritrea fell under British military occupation for about 11 years until 1952. In the late 1940s, atter the Treaty of Paris, when the question of the disposal of the former Italian colonies was discussed by the four powers - France, the United States, the USSR and Great Britain, they agreed on the granting of independence to Libya and Somalia. But when it came to Eritrea, they disagreed because of its tremendous strategic importance. Because of the failure to agree, the problem was referred to the United Nations (UN). In the United Nations, of course, the United States, which became the new neo. colonial master of Haile Selassie's Ethiopia, had signed an agreement with Haile Selassie, to extend him military assistance in return for a military base in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
In return for this the US would push for a federal association of Eritrea with Ethiopia, with the provision that eventually Ethiopia could annex Eritrea. Because of this agreement and despite, at that time, the opposition of various Third World and socialist countries led by the Soviet Union, demanding immediate independence for Eritrea, the US resolution was carried and Eritrea was federated with Ethiopia. In 1962 Haile Selassie unilaterally abrogated the federal resolution and annexed Eritrea, making it the fourteenth province of Ethiopia.
So, when you look at the Eritrean question from the historical and legal
International Viewpoint 9 December 1985 point of view, it's very clear that the question is one of completing the process of decolonisation in Africa. Since the 1940s and 1950s, the Eritrean people, through various organs, tried to win their right to self-determination by peaceful political means.
In 1958 Eritrean workers, students and intellectuals participated in a demonstration led by the Syndicate of Eritrean Labour, and the Ethiopian army opened fire, wounding over 500 people. At that time it became clear that there was no possibility of regaining the right of self-determination by peaceful means, so the Eritrean Liberation Movement was created with the aim of making preparations to pursue armed struggle.
In 1961 when the armed struggle began, it broke out in Western Eritrea. The leadership of the Eritrean Liberation Front was feudal-bourgeois, unable to correctly understand the nature of Eritrean society and devise a programme of struggle which would group around it the various social forces. In other words the national liberation war must, at least in form, encompass and bring in all nationalist forces. In content it must be democratic. For the vast majority of Eritreans, who are workers and peasants, the question of independence does not mean replacement of an Ethio. pian flag by an Eritrean flag, but a fundamental transformation of Eritrean society. So the struggle must be national and democratic at the same time. There should be a programme which would appeal to these forces, which would implement these aims.
In the beginning there was no such clear political line, either a national programme or a democratic programme. So there was internal conflict within the Front and this internal conflict, after many years, led to a split in 1970. So in 1970 you had the establishment of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front as
social force as its vanguard. But But this means that 80% of the population are peasants. About 60-70% of those are workers, then petty bourgeois, etc. So you can describe Eritrean society basically as feudalcapitalist. In the countryside there are feudal relations of production.
In our national democratic programme we try to ensure the leading role of the proletariat. The consolidation of the leading role of the working class can be guaranteed only if there is strong worker-peasant alliance, in which, of course, revolutionary intellectuals also play an important role. So in a sense when we speak of the national democratic revolution in Eritrea, it's a revolution which seeks to liberate Eritrea from Ethiopian • colonialism but simultaneously seeks to liberate the Eritrean people from backwardness - not only feudalism, but also capitalism. We describe our front as a national democratic front with socialist tendencies.
Q. Would you say then that the liberated areas represent any kind of prefiguration of a future society?
A. What I can say to you now is that the liberated areas comprise at least 85% of Eritrea. There exists there a government without a state. We have a very well-organised infrastructure that functions throughout the liberated areas. We have a series of schools and hospitals. We have what we would regard as the future industrial base of Eritrea and we manufacture most of the things we need including medical supplies ete. So economically, socially and politically we have the embryo of a functioning state system.
I can give you more detail of how we organise at the village level in the liberated areas. You see, although we believe we represent the people, we are fighting in order that the people themselves can decide their future. So at the village level, there is the People's Assembly which functions autonomously. It elects its own leaders. The general assembly as a whole elects its own executive committee with sub-committees responsible for security, for land, for administration, for the militia etc, etc. So you have that at the village level, which goes down to the street level, and then up to the nationwide level -the assembly, the legislative body, which also elects the executive of the government.
In terms of land reform the peasantry are divided into three types; the poor, the middle and the rich peasants. For our political education programme, and for our guiding work, we work towards the seizure of political power by the poorest sections of the peasantry, in alliance with the middle peasantry. Of course the rich 16
«There are now 104 schools with 15,000 students...» (DR peasants, inasmuch as they accept our programme of land redistribution, they are welcome to participate in the national democratic revolution.
Ours is one of the longest struggles for national liberation in history. From 1961 until say, 1974, the struggle was basically a guerilla struggle. From 1974 until 1976, it was mobile more or less. From 1976 to 1978, or until now, the last nine years it has been conventional warfare. But all the time we waged three kinds of warfare. We waged positional warfare, trench warfare to defend the liberated areas including the liberated towns and we waged mobile warfare, to destroy Ethiopian garrisons in the contested zones and to liberate more territory. And then we kept up aiso guerilla warfare in different parts of Eritrea, to hamper the enemies' supply and communication lines.
There are no accurate statistics, or at least, I don't have any. But to give you an example of how costly this war is: in 1982, the Ethiopians launched their first official big offensive - the sixth offensive or operation Red Star. During four months of continuous offensives they lost all the battles and they lost 43,000 men killed and missing. From July 7, when we liberated the town of Barentu in 51 days of fighting they lost 11,450 men - of which 4,200 were killed and 1,050 captured and 6,000 injured. There are now about 10,500 Ethiopian officers and men who are captured prisoners of war. To get the overall number of killed and wounded you multiply that at least 15 or twenty times. For our part also, in terms of civilian casualties the liberation war must have cost about 100,000 people. On the Ethiopian side for 1984 the head of the political department of the Ethiopian army gave the figure that from 1978 until 1984 the Ethiopians had lost about 150,000 to 200,000 men. The war is mostly close hand-to-hand combat. The Ethiopians have superiority in mechanised warfare - they have more tanks, more artillery. We neutralise that by fighting at close range, with mostly hand grenades.
Q. At the end of the 1970s there were Cuban and Soviet officers and advisers engaged. As far as you know, what is the situation now?
A. By October 1977 we had liberated most of Eritrea including most of the major towns except the capital and four other garrisons. At that time the Ethiopian army was completely defeated. Until that time it was supported by the United States and Israel. It was defeated and the fall of Asmara was just a matter of time. But at that juncture, there came about large-scale Soviet intervention. The Cuban army came but it was mainly engaged in the war in Ogaden against Somalia. What came to Eritrea was mechanised units of the South Yemeni army, the East German army and Soviet advisers and about 3,000 military experts. The whole Ethiopian effort was led by Marshall Wassily Petrov, the deputy defence minister of the Soviet Union and commander of the Soviet ground forces, who was coordinating the Ethiopian offensives. At that time the character of the war changed. It was no longer Eritreans and Ethiopians because the Ethiopians were defeated. It was against the intervention of a major power and its allies. We made an assessment of the balance of forces and we made a strategic withdrawal. We withdrew to the North where the terrain would help us neutralise the mechanised advantage. Since then from June/July 1978 until the end of 1983 we were waging a defensive war.
The Ethiopians, supported by the Soviet Union, the Libyans, the South International Viewpoint 9 December 1985
Yemenis and the East Germans were trying to capture our strategic bases including Naksa, the provincial capital of the second largest province in Eritrea which has become, since its liberation in March 1977 the symbol of Eritrean resistance. They conducted seven large-scale offensives against Naksa and the strategic base in the North West. This all failed. We were able to successfully defend our liberated areas and our strategic base and from January 1984 we entered a new phase. We call it the stage of transition from the defensive to the strategic offensive. In this context we liberated the town of Tessenei in January 1984. We liberated North Eastern Sahel - the coastal strip in March 1984. And in a brilliant operation against the Ethiopian Air Force Base in Asmari we destroyed 33 Ethiopian planes on the ground and we have been pushing on all fronts. Last July we liberated the town of Barentu as well.
So generally, we have been able to bring about a shift in the balance of forces. We are not really on the offensive yet but we are on the verge of the offensive. This stage of transition may take time, may require several engagements: maybe we will liberate towns, withdraw, liberate others or advance, it depends on the relation of forces at any given moment in the particular locality. It means that virtually the whole population is mobilised.
Q. Did the Russians and the East Germans and the South Yemenis and Cubans increase their presnee recently?
The East Germans and Yemenis, yes. But the Cubans, no. They have refused to participate in the sixth offensive. They said the Eritrean question is something else - 'We can't fight the Eritreans.' They play a role in Somalia which is also indirect participation here because they have thousands of troops in the Ogaden so the Ethiopian army can shift its forces to Eritrea. So you have an indirect intervention. So you can't say the Cubans don't play a role - but not directly in Eritrea.
Q. What kind of role do women play in the struggle?
A. Women play perhaps an extraordinary role. About 30% of our army is made up of women. Women hold positions in the Front at all levels. There is no department in the EPLF in which women do not play a very important role. They are fighters, commanders, they are in the various departments. They are leading cadres etc. Those who have visited areas where national liberation movements have been active - Vietnam, China, Angola, Mozambique, say that the actual role of women is most advanced in Eritrea. Despite the fact that in some regions of Eritrea there is an extremely feudal tradition - in some areas women cannot even look at their husbands - they are always veiled, despite this in these areas women are now leaders in the People's Assemblies. The changes in the role of women in Eritrean society are really revolutionary. In the Front and in Eritrean society as a whole, we have been able to destroy all legal barriers to equality. We have been able to set up the essential infrastructures that will eventually lead to total liberation. We believe that the guarantee for women's equality is their role in the production process. That lays the essential groundwork. But the struggle has to continue. We cannot be complacent.
Q. What have been the consequences of the famine on the liberation struggle?
A. For the last four years there has been no rain. There has been severe drought. The worst hit has been Northern Ethiopia and Eritrea. In Northern Ethiopia about one million people died. Eritrea has been the worst hit but we have been able to save hundreds of thousands of people through our efforts.
In Eritrea the problem of the famine is not a consequence of natural disaster alone, it is also a product of the Ethiopian war policy. Throughout the liberated areas the Ethiopian Air Force bombards the farms, the schools, the hospitals. The military regime seeks to use famine as a weapon to force the Eritrean people to capitulate and to weaken their resistance. There is a drought but if there had been peace then we have resources which we could harnass. All we need is concrete and steel to build dams. To a large extent the disaster in Ethiopia and Eritrea is man-made because all human and material resources are being diverted for war.
We are trying to secure our human and democratic rights as a people and the Ethiopians are trying to deny us this right. We wage a just war and the Ethiopians wage an unjust war but the consequences are disastrous. There is a lot of destruction. The Ethiopians destroy villages in the liberated areas, they destroy storage units, they destroy even the dams we have built to irrigate. So the Ethiopian war effort has contributed tremendously to the famine.
For our part we have tried to minimise its effects. Throughout 1985, for instance, we have been concentrating on providing assistance for people. Our main priority is the war but also a lot of our effort has gone into alleviating the problem of the famine.
We have established 43 feeding centres in the liberated areas. We prevented people from crossing the border in the Sudan and with the help of the Eritrean Relief Association we have been able to provide for these people. But the aid we have been getting has not been enough so we cannot say we have solved the problem.
Q. What kind of international aid have you received?
A. We have received help from the Scandinavian countries and from non-governmental organisations in Europe and North America. Initially the aid was about 5% and it is now 15%. Compared to the need it is virtually nothing. We have also called on the Ethiopian government for a ceasefire. The Ethiopian government has received a lot of humanitarian assistance which it uses to feed its army. We have appealed to non governmental organisations and even to governments who provide assistance to distribute it themselves. We are for a ceasefire so that these organisations can distribute in the Ethiopian controlled areas as well as in the liberated areas. The Ethiopians have refused this offer of a ceasefire. We have also called for a peaceful resolution of the Eritrean question. The problem of famine by the Bitio and drought have been aggravated by the Ethiopian refusal to accept our proposals and by their continuing war policy which seeks to destroy everything in the liberated areas. Their policy is to starve us into submission, to force people to go into the Sudan - this is their policy. Famine is not just a national disaster (DR)
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International Viewpoint 9 December 1985