It is over two years since the guns became silent, after the previous two years' war between Ethiopia and its problematic neighbour, Eritrea. It is generally believed that almost a hundred thousand combatants died from both sides before the war ended with Ethiopian as the "victor". Badme, the village, which was initially invaded by the Eritrean army and which was after unimaginable bloodshed taken back by Ethiopia, then became synonymous with Adwa, the location of the first comprehensive victory achieved by Ethiopia over the Italian colonialists in 1896.

A popular street poem of the time went something like this "When we come back victorious, after Badme, beware Ato Meles". In phonetic Amharic the one liner read as "Kebadme Mels Woyolet Meles". After the victory over Badme, the prime minster was supposed to be given notice to vacate his post as he was solely responsible for the predicament that the country was facing at the time, unable to drive out the much smaller neighbour, Eritrea's army from the supposedly occupied lands of Ethiopia for nearly two years.

Badme itself has often been described as a sparsely populated grazing plain flanked by rocky hills and mountains on one side and a barren stretch of grassland and dust on the other. However, Badme's economic insignificance to Ethiopia as well as to Eritrea did not seem to have dampened the spirit of thousands of participants in the victory march of the capital city, Addis Abeba, at the time. Neither did it stop this small village on the border with Eritrea from becoming a symbol of the fighting spirit of the youth of modern-day Ethiopia in the tradition of their forefathers, in Adwa, Dogali and Ambalage.

Having paid the rightful respects to all the martyrs of this war, one cannot help but wonder why Badme became the focal point of this conflict and why it had remained the puzzle that has finally been resolved as Eritrean territory by the Eritrean-Ethiopian Boundary Commission. On the official map initially presented to the parties by the EEBC, the Boundary Commission seemed to have overlooked the significance of this small town, albeit symbolically, to both adversaries in the war and failed to state specifically the town's fate one way or the other. It is commonly believed that the first shots of the war were also fired in this same small village over the conflicting claims made by both Ethiopian and Eritrean officials in the area over the ownership of the territory where the village is located.

It has also been over two years since the signing of the Algiers peace settlement under the auspices of the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the subsequent United Nations Security Council resolution that established the independent Eritrean-Ethiopian Border Commission to arbitrate on the territorial claims of the disputed border regions, including the towns of Badme, Zalanbessa, Bure and Tsorena and physically demarcate the long border between the belligerent neighbours. It is also a year since the publication of the decision of the EEBC and its communication of its official decision to both parties in the dispute. The EEBC's decision had, however, at least initially failed to provide a distinct borderline on the map that clearly demarcated the contested towns into one or the other's territory, giving way to both the Ethiopian and the Eritrean governments to declare victory to their peoples in the aftermath of the publication of the Commission's decision and to have won Badme to their respective sovereignities.

Now, it seems that the Eritreans might have actually won Badme thanks to a war that was prematurely started and indecisively halted without accomplishing anything. If Ethiopia had been the real victor of the war, it was essential to have proven the victory by capturing and holding on to a militarily and economically strategic region like the port of Assab, of which countless Ethiopians could provide as numerous historical and legal evidences, including previous United Nation's resolutions, establishing Ethiopia's legitimate claim to its only seaport. Though a number of the ousted and imprisoned leadership of the TPLF is said to have supported the idea of taking over Assab, the pro-Eritrean clique led by Meles Zenawi was said to have been vehemently opposed to the idea. The split within the leadership of the party seems to have basically stemmed from the differences that cropped up in the way the war had been conducted and suddenly stopped by Meles and his cliques.

An unfinished war, however, always leaves a trail of uncertainities that has to be cleared long after the ceasefire is declared and the white flag is hoisted. A case in point is the Gulf War in 1991 led by President George Bush Sr, that left Saddam Hussein in power, to lead a decade later to yet another war led by his son, the other President George Bush Jr, against the same dictator, the first war should have removed. This is not meant to declare support to this unfair war and illegal invasion of a sovereign state, Iraq, but to emphasize the real intentions of the United States and British-led war going on right now and to show the continuity of the goal of the Gulf war that was not really finshed in 1991 by the senior President George Bush, giving the son another opportunity to conclude it decisively. But it is only a super-power like the United States of America that can afford and get a second chance and a second attempt at the same war that was triggered over a decade ago and had also been declared won at the time.

Poor Ethiopia, however, cannot afford a second war over Badme and its wastelands. In fact a lot of people in both countries and the international community and mass media had condemned the first war and had called it the most "senseless war" in the world going on at the time. A second war between drought and famine-ridden Ethiopia and Eritrea where several million people are living on the verge of death, will be too difficult for words to describe as the devastation and human suffering a second war could cause will be too horrific to contemplate.

It is obvious that the leadership in both states is not at all concerned about the interests of their citizens and take war not only as a means to come to power but also as a means to stay in power. Among the many blunders of President Isaiyas of Eritrea, the costliest one of his life so far, must have been his stupid decision to invade Ethiopia. All the pretensions of the "visionary leader" were exposed to the world for what they were. President Isaiyas was leading Eritrea on the path of the beaten road of one party, one-man rule, that has suffocated Africa and bared it of its vitality and wasted its resources. In addition, in the tradition of all confused dictators, who had suffered and continue to suffer delusions of grandeur and glory, President Isayias has turned Eritrea into the mad dog of the neighbourhood, fighting all its neighbours, including Yemen, Djibouti, Sudan and Ethiopia, all within a handful of years.

After the first miltary offensive by the Eritrean army and its invasion of Badme in 1998, up to the flare up of the seond round of armed conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which started in earnest around the beginning of the year 2000, the OAU, the EU, the Rwandan and the United States governments, had all tried to bring the two governments to a round table to discuss their conflicting claims to Badme and to determine the general location of the borderline between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The same kind of independent border commission under the auspices of the International Tribunal of Justice at the Hague was also suggested at the time with the intention of making its decision as final and binding in the arbitration of the border dispute. But, neither Ato Meles nor Ato Isaiyas would listen to the various mediators involved, and would not be persuaded to settle this dispute in a peaceful and diplomatic manner. Of course, as President Isaiyas of Eritrea was recognized as the aggressor both in Ethiopia and internationally, it was not at all difficult for the Ethiopian government to rally popular support for the ensuing attack that included the bombing of the airport in Asmara. The rest as they say is history.

After tens of thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean youth fell on the merciless battlefields and trenches on the various fronts on the borders, and after the Ethiopian government declared "decisive victory" over the Eritrean "enemy", the dispute that started the war was not resolved by the war. The Algiers peace settlement and the subsequent United Nations Security Council resolution, which had been accepted as the basis of the resolution of the border issue between Ethiopia and Eritrea seemed to have brought finality to the process by the establishment of the EEBC and the mutual agreement of the conflicting parties to accept its decision as binding.

Now, it looks like there is no forseeable end to this dispute as there is a rumour of war again, over none other than Badme, where the Ethiopian military victory was claimed only to be snatched away by a decision that came in its aftermath giving the story of the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea an ironic twist, significant not only for its horrific human tragedy but also for its senselessness. Recent undiplomatic exchanges of threats and counter-threats by the officials of both regimes point to yet another round of hostilities between the two war mongering cliques ruling over the antagonistic sides in this meaningless conflict. And I am asking whether we are back to square one?