Eritrea: the Long Road to Independence (part II)
Introductory note: Situated in the volatile Horn of Africa and blessed with a long, pristine coastline along the Red Sea, Eritrea is a nation shaped by resilience, sacrifice, and a long struggle against foreign efforts at domination. After enduring one of the longest and most devastating liberation wars in modern African history, Eritrea finally achieved independence from Ethiopia in 1991.
This second instalment in the series examines the dismantling of Eritrea's UN-mandated federal autonomy under Ethiopian imperial rule and the events that ultimately pushed Eritreans toward struggle and armed resistance. While Part I explored the colonial foundations of the Eritrean state and the international decisions that denied Eritreans their right to self-determination, this chapter focuses on the systematic erosion of the Federal Arrangement, the intensification of repression, and the birth of the armed liberation struggle.
On December 2, 1950, after years of international debate and political manoeuvring, the United Nations General Assembly adopted Resolution 390(V). The resolution denied Eritreans their full independence and instead "federated" Eritrea with Ethiopia as "an autonomous unit...under the sovereignty of the Ethiopian Crown." Under the arrangement, Eritrea was meant to retain legislative, executive, and judicial authority over domestic affairs, while Ethiopia assumed control over defence, foreign affairs, and international commerce.
Follow us on WhatsApp | LinkedIn for the latest headlines
Yet almost immediately from the outset, Emperor Haile Selassie's imperial regime viewed the "Federal Arrangement" with open contempt. The regime regarded Eritrean autonomy not as a binding international obligation, but as a temporary obstacle to complete annexation. This attitude was made unmistakably clear in a speech delivered to the Eritrean Assembly on March 22, 1955, when the Emperor's representative declared:
"There are no internal or external affairs as far as the office of His Imperial Majesty's representative is concerned, and there will be none in the future. The affairs of Eritrea concern Ethiopia as a whole and the Emperor."
Over the following decade, Ethiopia systematically dismantled the "Federal Structure" piece by piece.
Just 19 days after the "federation" formally came into effect, the imperial regime issued Proclamation 130, placing Eritrea's highest court under the authority of the Ethiopian Supreme Court, thus a direct violation of the Eritrean Constitution. In the years that followed, Eritrea's constitutional autonomy was steadily stripped away. The Eritrean flag was abolished and replaced with Ethiopia's, while Amharic was imposed as the official language. Eritrean languages were progressively excluded from schools and official administration.
The erosion of Eritrea's autonomy extended far beyond constitutional matters. The country's elected local officials were forced from office, while its customs revenues were seized, and foreign investors were pressured to redirect economic activity toward Ethiopia proper. Eritrea's tax revenues increasingly served imperial interests, while profits generated by Eritrean industries were funnelled into the Ethiopian heartland.
At the same time, political repression against Eritreans intensified and all forms of peaceful dissent were met with violence. In 1957 and again in 1962, Eritrean students from across the nation and representing various ethnicities organized mass demonstrations against imperial rule. In February 1958, underground trade unions launched a four-day general strike that effectively paralyzed the country. Ethiopian security forces, as had become their wont, responded brutally, killing demonstrators, wounding many others, and arresting hundreds. Prominent nationalist leaders such as Woldeab Woldemariam and Ibrahim Sultan were also forced into exile, where they continued organizing opposition movements abroad.
Notably, although there were explicit provisions for protecting the "Federal Arrangement" as an international instrument and for the "UN to be seized of the matter in the event of any violation", loud and repeated appeals by Eritrean political leaders and activists again Ethiopia's brazen acts were met with abject silence. The international community, despite its central role in imposing the "federation", completely failed to enforce its own guarantees or hold Ethiopia accountable for violating the "federal arrangement". As the situation gradually deteriorated, Eritreans increasingly lost faith in the United Nations and in the possibility of securing justice through peaceful means.
The final bitter blow came in November 1962, when Emperor Haile Selassie formally dissolved the Eritrean Parliament and annexed Eritrea as Ethiopia's fourteenth province. The move was widely condemned by observers abroad, some of whom described it as a "putsch" and "a brutal and arbitrary act". Inside Eritrea, meanwhile, anger and disillusionment deepened, and many Eritreans refused to participate in the regime's orchestrated celebrations marking the annexation.
Despite the clear violation of Resolution 390(V), which stipulated that only the United Nations General Assembly possessed the authority to alter Eritrea's "federal" status, the international community once again remained silent. Rather than extinguishing Eritrean nationalism, however, the Ethiopian regime's annexation transformed it. The destruction of the federal arrangement became a decisive turning point, convincing many Eritreans that peaceful political struggle alone could no longer secure their national rights or dignity.
Indeed, if Eritrea had first been denied decolonization in the 1940s, the international community's silence during the years-long systematic dismantling of the "Federation" convinced many Eritreans that armed struggle had become the only remaining path toward liberation and inviolable nationhood.
It was within this atmosphere of repression, betrayal, and growing political frustration that Eritrea's formidable armed resistance was born.
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
On September 1, 1961, Hamid Idris Awate fired the opening shots of the Eritrean armed struggle in the Gash Barka region. Leading a small group of fighters equipped with only a handful of aging rifles, Awate launched what would become a thirty-year war for independence.
Awate, a veteran soldier respected for his military skill and long history of resistance against colonial and imperial authorities, had earned a formidable - and even feared - reputation among Italians, British officials, and Ethiopians alike. Only months after the armed struggle began, Abdu Mohamed Fayed became the first martyr of the Eritrean revolution after being killed near Adal, close to Sawa. Awate himself would die from illness less than a year after initiating the uprising, but the movement he sparked would ignite in a blazing wildfire across the country.
For Eritrean people, the armed struggle emerged not out of ideological extremism, but from the suppression of their right of decolonization, accumulated injustice and the systematic denial of basic political rights. As one scholar observed, the Eritrean revolution became "the expression of the indignation of a people whose rights [were] flagrantly and ruthlessly suppressed."
Another wrote more succinctly: "Three times denied their dreams, the Eritreans now had no other recourse than to take their destiny into their own hands."
