Abstract
Eritreans have been demanding the right to self-determination in the form of statehood since 1941 when Italian colonial rule ended, and have pursued this goal by means of armed conflict and diplomacy since 1961. After 30 years of war with the Ethiopian government, Eritreans finally negotiated and voted their way to independence in 1991–93. It was not only through military victory that the Eritrean leadership succeeded, but also because of its successful alliance with the other key Ethiopian opposition movements to the dictatorship of President Mengistu Haile Mariam. In addition, international acceptance of their achievement was facilitated by U.S. involvement in the negotiations. In the period 1991–93, U.S. policy underwent a transformation from Cold War opposition to the Eritrean secessionist movement, to offering crucial diplomatic and political support to the Eritrean leadership. The result constituted the first successful postcolonial secession in Africa.
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Notes
Secretary of State John Foster Dulles as quoted in Amare Tekle, ed., Eritrea and Ethiopia: From Conflict to Cooperation (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1994), 172.
Tekeste Negash and Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, Eritrea and Ethiopia: The Federal Experience (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, Rutgers—The State University, 1997), 19–22.
Baffour Agyeman-Duah, The United States and Ethiopia: Military Assistance and the Quest for Security, 1953–1993 (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 1994), 183.
Kinfe Abraham, Ethiopia: From Bullets to the Ballot Box; The Bumpy Road to Democracy and the Political Economy of Transition (Lawrenceville, NJ: The Red Sea Press, 1994), 15.
Okbazhi Yohannes, Eritrea: A Pawn in World Politics (Gainesville, FL: University of Florida Press, 1991), 191.
Roger S. Whitcomb, The American Approach to Foreign Affairs (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1998), 70.
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© 2003 Evelyn N. Farkas
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Farkas, E. (2003). Ethiopia. In: Fractured States and U.S. Foreign Policy: Iraq, Ethiopia, and Bosnia in the 1990s. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982438_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403982438_4
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