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Analysis: Eritrea's Border Troubles

Council on Foreign Relations

August 4, 2008
Author: Stephanie Hanson

"One stupid war is enough," Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told Newsweek in April 2008, explaining why he doesn't want to war with Eritrea again. Yet a few hundred UN troops are all that stands between the Ethiopian and Eritrean forces massed on either side of the disputed border zone. Those peacekeepers will be withdrawn (Bloomberg) on July 31, when the UN ends its Ethiopia-Eritrea mission. Neither side says it wants war, but experts continue to worry the standoff could spark open conflict, potentially igniting skirmishes across Africa's volatile horn.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993, following thirty years of war, but the border dividing the countries stil isn't clearly defined. An eruption of violence in 1998 led to two years of bloodshed but did little to resolve the border issue. An international border commission issued a legal demarcation of the border in 2002, awarding the contested town of Badme to Eritrea, but Ethiopia has refused to remove troops from the town, citing the deployment of Eritrean troops in what it calls a demilitarized zone. A military buildup on both sides was separated by a UN peacekeeping mission of several thousand troops until late 2007, when Eritrea cut the peacekeepers' diesel fuel supplies. In early 2008, the bulk of the UN peacekeepers left Eritrea, leaving only about three hundred troops.

In the absence of the UN mission, experts say a significant barrier to conflict between the two countries will be lost. A June 2008 International Crisis Group report finds fault with both sides, saying they have used the impasse as "an excuse to enhance their domestic power at the expense of democracy and economic growth, thus reducing the attractiveness to them of diplomatic compromise."

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2008 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.