Word: eritrea
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They were geologists searching for oil when suddenly they became pawns in Ethiopia's guerrilla war. They fell into guerrilla hands on March 26 when their helicopter went down in Eritrea province. Ever since, the men-Powers W. Case, 36, John W. Rogers, 50, both Texans, and Canadian Clifford James, 27, all employees of Tenneco, Inc., along with U.N. Geologist Matti Tavela, 54, an American working in Ethiopia-have been held. Their captors are members of the Eritrean Liberation Front (E.L.F.), which is waging a bloody secessionist battle. Tenneco has already agreed to an E.L.F. demand for $3 million...
...sinking British shipbuilding industry. Both men were then Zionists fighting British forces in Palestine-the Russian-born Brener as skipper of a blockade-busting refugee ship, the Polish-born Meridor as deputy commander of the bomb-wielding Irgun underground and sometime inmate of British prison camps in Kenya and Eritrea. But last week, Brener and Meridor's little-known Haifa-based firm, Maritime Fruit Carriers, completed placement of roughly $700 million in orders and options for 26 ships-the largest transaction from a single customer in British history...
...Ethiopian government has responded to E.L.F. tactics by declaring a state of emergency and placing most of Eritrea, with its 2,000,000 people, under military rule. Asmara, a sunny city of stucco buildings and broad piazzas that is perched atop a 7,600-ft. plateau, shows few signs of trouble. But the calm ends at the city limits. In the hope of denying food to the guerrillas, the army is moving much of the rural population, Viet Nam-style, into some 200 "fortified villages." Rebel activity has fallen off sharply since the army offensive began three months...
Enduring Feudalism. Even without guerrilla warfare in Eritrea, Haile Selassie's ancient empire is haunted by grave troubles. Its 25 million people, a fusion of Semites, Hamites, Nilotics and Bantus, have an average per capita income of $63 per year (one of the lowest in the world). Only 7% can read. Nine out of every ten Ethiopians are subsistence farmers, and 60% of these are tenants on feudal estates. Cities are haunted by bands of beggars and thieves...
...maintained control by playing the game of shum-shir (up-down in Amharic), a technique of raising and lowering his subordinates' status so as to maintain their loyalty without letting them become overly powerful. In the same way he balances his security forces against each other. In Eritrea, for example, there are two ranking generals but only one division, a paramilitary force of 5,000 field police to balance the division and a smaller force of home guards to balance the police. The inescapable conclusion is that the Emperor's fear of an internal coup is greater than...