Word: rebels
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Four miles to the east of Nacfa, a once prosperous farm town that is now a bombed-out ruin, rebel fighters carrying Soviet-made AK-47 assault rifles stand watch in trenches along a ridge. Across a narrow valley, in places just 60 yards away, Ethiopian troops are dug in. Some of their comrades, identifiable by their bright green uniforms, lie dead in no-man's-land. An exchange of automatic-weapons fire echoes through the valley. Moments later, two Soviet-built Ethiopian MiGs roar overhead in search of the rebels' camouflaged artillery and tank emplacements. Sipping...
...month the army launched the second phase of a fall offensive aimed at breaking through the E.P.L.F.'s 250-mile-long defensive line and capturing Nacfa. Ethiopian infantry, backed by Soviet-made T-54 and T-55 tanks, tried to blast its way onto the heights commanded by the rebels. One night Ethiopian fighter-bombers pounded rebel positions near Nacfa for five hours with bombs, rockets and napalm. Ethiopian infantrymen, backed by more than a dozen tanks, managed to overrun a rebel position. Before the Ethiopians could move on Nacfa, though, rebel reinforcements moved in from the flanks and drove...
That was only one of a dozen failed Ethiopian assaults during November. "It's a pity to see the way they waste men," observes a rebel fighter. Ethiopian casualties in the battle numbered 200 killed or wounded and four captured. The rebels refuse to discuss their losses. Says Afewerki: "When you attack, you lose men, and when you defend, you also lose men." The E.P.L.F. leadership is confident, as are Western intelligence analysts, that the sputtering government drive, like the seven other major offensives launched by Mengistu's army since 1977, will fail to crack rebel lines around Nacfa...
...bombardment is probably the major cause of casualties. It also shapes practically every aspect of life behind E.P.L.F. lines. Unless skies are overcast, vehicles are not permitted to move during the day. Trucks or jeeps are hidden beneath nearly every acacia tree. Antiaircraft guns are on constant alert. Every rebel building is covered with vines and tree branches; * some permanent structures have 2-ft.-thick stone walls that can withstand barrages of shrapnel. Civilians are regularly lectured on how to wipe burning napalm jelly from their skin...
Financial support for the rebels comes from some 500,000 Eritreans living overseas. The U.S. and other Western governments have not backed the E.P.L.F., in part because some of the group's leaders are Marxists. In addition, like many African countries, they are reluctant to support what some see as a secessionist movement. Says a U.S. State Department official: "(Such) support establishes precedents that could prove explosive all around the continent." Rebel leaders, however, have long insisted that the U.S. and the West have a responsibility to back Eritrean independence. They point out that in 1962 Haile Selassie asserted Addis...