Word: eritrea
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...past 24 years, Ethiopia's northern province of Eritrea, with its strategic 620-mile coastline on the Red Sea, has been mired in a savage war between Eritrean nationalists, who are fighting to win their independence, and the Ethiopian government, which is bent on subduing what it calls the "Eritrean bandits." The U.S. backed the Ethiopian regime of the late Emperor Haile Selassie during the early years of the civil war. But U.S. ties with the country all but dissolved after 1977, when Ethiopia's leader, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, allied his country with the Soviet Union...
Despite its magnitude, the Ethiopian evacuation is relatively orderly. Traveling on foot for as long as eight weeks from their homes in the drought- ridden northern provinces of Eritrea, Tigre and Welo, the refugees stop at makeshift rest camps provided by two of Ethiopia's major antigovernment guerrilla organizations, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (E.P.L.F.) and the Tigre People's Liberation Front (T.P.L.F.). The refugees move largely at night; otherwise, they might be attacked by Ethiopian air force planes. In one widely reported strafing run on a refugee column last month, Ethiopian jets killed 18 travelers and wounded...
...central committee: "The famine is here because of the way in which the government is trying to resolve its political problems. The lack of rain has just aggravated things." The guerrillas claim that some 3.8 million people in Tigre are affected by the famine, along with 2 million in Eritrea...
...that it is using Western food aid as part of its "pacification" program. Though Ethiopia says it has 211 famine-relief centers operating chiefly in its northern provinces, all in towns under government control, Mengistu's opponents maintain that little food is reaching most of the residents of Eritrea and Tigre. The main reason: the government refuses to distribute aid in "unsafe" regions, meaning those under guerrilla control. Those who visit government food centers must display identity cards showing that they belong to state-controlled peasant organizations or neighborhood associations. Says REST's Zeno: "It is only the very young...
...guerrilla organizations claim to be both willing and able to help in the relief effort. Operating out of underground bunkers in Eritrea, they organize occasional truck convoys to ferry supplies from Port Sudan on the Red Sea into their territory. What the insurgents lack, however, is access to adequate relief supplies and the means to transport them through a war zone. The Mengistu government has refused rebel offers of free passage for food aid intended to reach the hinterland's of the war-torn provinces...